Two of the most famous suicide sites in the world are the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay and the Aokighara Forest in Japan. Both have been the topic of documentaries: The Bridge and Aokigahara – Suicide Forest.
Eric Steel, director of The Bridge sought a permit to film the Golden Gate Bridge, without divulging his real purpose which was to capture suicides. He later managed to capture 23 of the 24 suicides that happened within his yearlong watch. He went on to interview families of the victims, in an attempt to understand their lives before jumping off the bridge. In another controversial move, he didn’t disclose that the suicides had been captured on film.
Aokigahara – Suicide Forest follows geologist Azusa Hayano on a regular suicide watch. He finds an abandoned car near the forest and notes how someone could have gone in there ‘with troubled thoughts’. During his trek, he talks about the history of the place, the men and women who come to hang themselves. He finds a skeleton which he deems to be at least a year old, traces of a human life—food wrappers, crushed soda cans, flowers and food left by relatives and a man in a tent, apparently contemplating suicide.
“I was curious why people kill themselves in such a beautiful forest,” Hazano muses.
Both documentaries try to answer this question, as to why especially vulnerable people are lured to come to these places to commit suicide. The families of the victims in The Bridge speak of problems they have observed, of their loved ones feeling alienated from the world. They try to understand, and bring forth stories, anecdotes, memories. Sometimes their eyes brim with tears. In Aokigahara Forest, Hayano shifts from theorizing about the state of society which leads to annihilation to saying he doesn’t quite get it at all.