icarus.jpg

Pieter Brueghel, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” c. 1558.

Today, I’ve been writing about “The Bridge” (opening in Chicago next week), a documentary about the stories of people who jumped to their deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge in 2004.

bridgesplash2.jpg

From “The Bridge,” directed by Eric Steel (2005)

I read that the director, Eric Steel (who had cameras on the bridge from dawn to dusk for the entire year) had invoked Breughel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” — and that resonated with me. Then I remembered the poem of the same name by one of my favorite poets, William Carlos Williams.

vjump.jpg

From “Vertigo,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1958)

For me, as an American, a West Coaster and a cinephile, the Golden Gate Bridge has always loomed large in my consciousness. Today, as I attempt to digest this shattering film, I am moved and awed to offer these images, from Brueghel to the bridge — visions not just of a magnificent structure or landmark, but of a place of mythic stature in the imagination.

“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”by William Carlos Williams

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

(Statistic: Most American suicides take place in the spring.)

Jim Emerson

Jim Emerson is the founding editor of RogerEbert.com and has written lots of things in lots of places over lots of years. Mostly involving movies.

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