Man on Wire

Easily one of the best documentaries I've seen, Man On Wire swept me off my feet not with spectacle but with a certain quiet recognition of the incredible events it chronicles - a team of young, rebellious twentysomethings who rigged a wire across the twin towers that their mascot, Philippe Petit, walked or as one police officer comments, "danced," across for forty- five minutes.

The reenactments are superbly done, and director James Marsh keeps the film at a short 90 minutes to keep it from getting boring. Perhaps the most surprising thing was the eloquence and insight of the comments by Petit and company. His ex-girlfriend Annie, for instance, said of meeting Petit for the first time "he courted me... and then my life was all about him. it was as if I had no destiny of my own... I was following his destiny."

Viewing the movie as a character study of Mr. Petit offers another layer to film - this man, who seems wholly self-consumed and unaware of a) the potential problems of any such idea he stumbled upon and b) the emotional pressure he was putting on his friends who could have aided his death, speaks frankly even when discussing the aftermath of his stunt - which indirectly ended many of his friendships with people close to him.

But despite his own shortcomings, viewers cannot deny Petit as the man who did something that none of us could ever imagine: he pinpointed his dream and he achieved it. "The towers were built for him." Annie comments at the beginning of this powerful and poignant study of triumph and aspiration. And in the end, it is the not the actual nineteen seventies footage depicting a tiny man walking the line between life and death that communicates this theme the most; it is a pencil drawing Petit drew on a wall beforehand - two rectangles and one, sloping line between them. It is this thin curved line, this gossamer thread connecting two shapes that signifies the whole expanse of the human spirit.

"Genius is a transcendent capacity for taking trouble first of all" Frederick the great by Thomas Carlyle

"Genius: the mental endowment peculiar to an individual; that disposition or aptitude of mind which qualifies a person for a certain kind of action or special success in a given pursuit." Webster's International Dictionary

This is Phillip Petit, the 25 year old who in August of 1974 walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the WTC. Yet what is that which makes a documentary on such a fantastic, quixotic accomplishment relevant to us mortals? Is it not the same kind of awe the passers by experienced when they saw that morning a tiny figure suspended above the void, the same kind of marvel the people interviewed experienced again when they described Petit's walking on air some thirty years later? What is Petit's accomplishment if not a profound religious experience, a form of divinity in itself? And it is exactly because Petit's action bears no explanation, it has no rationale behind its daring do, no tangible end by which to hold it and examine it in the light of logic. The action in the same time the reason of it. What did Petit accomplish but a monument of human perseverance, enduring will and the triumph of mind over matter?

If MAN ON WIRE is so successful at what it does, it's not only because of the feat it purports to describe but because of the path it takes in describing it. Staging it as a heist thriller, filmed in black and white in shades of noir, orchestrated like a bank robbery of sorts, the same kind of films Petit laboriously studied as he was preparing his takeover. By presenting us with real people who emote better than a lot of actors could even dream of. By placing Phillip Petit pivotal in the narration of the events unfolding, a passionate man with an almost half-mad gleam in his eye but also a love of life that leaps across the screen as utterly genuine. By adopting the skeleton of a real movie - not a sterile "went there, did that" documentary but one with a premise, plot, setup and payoff, climax and conclusion.

Filmed with true cinematographic flair, in turns suspenseful, faith-reaffirming and awe-inspiring, MAN ON WIRE is the unexpected show-stealer of the year, sneaking under the nose of Hollywood behemoths with 50 times its budget and doing what they're too sluggish to do, too dazzled by their own spectacle. A simple story beautifully told.

Man on Wire (2008) ****

There was no why. No rhyme or reason, other than the fact that those towers existed. Existed, as one friend notes, for Philippe Petit to walk between them. People have always found it difficult to comprehend that Petit wire walked between the World Trade Center towers, nearly 1400 feet above the ground, without being able to justify his cause. Petit once simply stated that when he sees oranges, he juggles; when he sees two towers, he walks.

The story of how Petit and his motley crew pulled off the stunt is just as interesting as the walk itself. That day in August 1974 and the events which lead up to it are the focus of James Marsh's incredible documentary, Man on Wire. Marsh mixes documentary footage, provided by Petit and his colleagues, with reconstructions, blended so seamlessly every foot of film might as well be authentic. Petit and his friends tell the story with eager enthusiasm, particularly Petit himself. He is a man like no other. He is a ball of energy and charisma, completely harmless to everyone but perhaps himself. He has remained a child at heart.

He details the moment when he first concocted the idea to walk between the towers. While sitting in a dentist's chair, waiting to have a tooth fixed, he catches a glimpse of the towers as they are being constructed in a newspaper. He ran out of the dentist's office in a state of grace. He gleefully recounts that he didn't stick around to get his tooth fixed, and suffered the pain for weeks. But pain was no matter, he'd found his dream. He described his intentions not as a wire walker setting out to conquering heights, but as a poet looking to conquer the stage. A friend recounts that each day for Philippe was a work of art.

Petit had walked between the towers at Notre Dame, and the harbour bridge in Sydney. He was always arrested afterward of course. How joyful that when he was arrested after completing his feat in Sydney that his first order of business was to pick the watch of the police man arresting him for a gag! His reckless love for what he was doing was not fool hardy though. "The fact that death frames what you are doing makes you take it very seriously," he explains. Death was of course on his mind, but his aims were as a poet, a dreamer, an artist - not a dare devil: "If I die, what a beautiful death!" To accomplish his walk between the towers required months of preparation. The crew practiced in a field in France, with a wire the exact length between the towers. To mimic conditions, he had his friends jump and pull on the wires. He never loses balance, his concentration is impeccable. But the work doesn't end just with practice. They had to get nearly a ton of equipment to the top, all without being discovered - at least as impossible as the walk itself. They had to somehow get the rope across. How they do so is ingenious. They acquired id's to get inside, dressed as a mix of businessmen and construction workers (the towers were still partially under construction. One of the most incredible parts of the story is the night they went up to set everything up and do the walk. They're interrupted by a security guard as they begin unpacking. Philippe and his friend Jean-Francois have to run and hide under a tarp, on a beam above the WTC's 400 meter elevator shaft. They hide there, their bodies tangled, not moving, not speaking, for hours waiting for the guard to leave.

Man on Wire is built like a suspense film. It's engrossing and expertly crafted, and told with the passion and thoroughness of oral storytellers of old. Philippe Petit speaks as if he were reciting poetry in his thick French accent. Marsh accentuates the action with pitch perfect choices in the soundtrack, ranging from Satie and other classics to the disco classic A Fifth of Beethoven.

When Petit finally makes his walk, his friends gathered to watch below as he either committed suicide or one of the most poetic crimes of the century, the emotion is overwhelming. He recounts it with unbridled joy, his friends with tears in their eyes. I too was nearly moved to tears of joy. I can't remember the last documentary film to strike such a chord.

If Petit had of failed, he would have fallen to his death and likely been remembered as "that idiot." Petit recalls thinking with one foot on the wire, that to place his other foot on it and take that step was probably going to be the end of his life. Well, this life. If he fell, he would have fallen "to another life." That was his philosophy. But he didn't fall. He made it, 8 times. One police officer describes him as a dancer - he didn't just walk. He taunted police, laid down, knelt down. He had the time of his life. He was arrested with force as soon as he stepped onto the south tower - the police did not take kindly to his taunts. The charge: trespassing and disturbing the peace. The sentence: perform a show for the kids in the park as penance.

There is something so life affirming about one man boldly walking into what should have been his demise. People responded to his act of daring as if he had given charity. In a way, he had. His performance was a gift to the world. What that gift was is as abstract as the reasons for the walk itself. Sometimes we don't know why something is beautiful, we just know it is. What Philippe Petit did was beautiful, a work of poetic grandeur. Why I do not know. Words do not exist to explain. I just know.

I went to see Man on Wire with my mother and a friend, and after it my mother said simply "something like this will never happen again." Meaning not so much that someone won't try something death-defying or crazy like walking a tight rope somewhere or climbing up a building (matter of fact that still happens in Manhattan as recently as a couple of months back), but that this sort of situation- a man going across something as perilous and unique as the Twin Towers- is based in a film that preserves his story like so. Philippe Petit was already a tight-rope walker who did some crazy stunts (i.e. crossing Notre Dame's stretch of space in Paris), but this was his crowning achievement which, oddly enough, didn't quite get the kind of buzz the film might depict; the day of Petit's walk across the towers, Nixon resigned from the presidency.

Just a simple profile on the man might be enough, and hearing this artist (however "French" he might get in saying that it's like poetry, which maybe it is for all I know) is something to behold as a figure who sees himself as a rebel but not without some reason or in what he does. But Marsh's magnificence is first to actually make us forget, just a second, that the towers are no longer with us; it's never mentioned in the film that they're gone, so the lingering absence is all the more troubling once remembered by the viewer. One is left with the purity of this on-the-surface stunt that becomes akin to a bank robbery to Petit, as he plans and spies on the site and forms a 'crew' to do the job of sneaking up to the top level and for three days continuing to stay elusive (even going under a tarp for hours on end with a co-hort to hide from guards) while attaching the cables- which also, at one point, nearly falls apart as a plan.

Then, second, Marsh reveals himself as good as a director of dramatization in a documentary I've seen since Errol Morris; perhaos even more daring with his black and white photography of what starts as a sneak-in (watch for fake sideburns on the actors), then transforms into a full-blown noir with beautiful lighting and exterior shots of the building and other angles that just stun the crap out of a viewer not expecting such artistry. In a sense Marsh is attempting something as daring as Petit, only by way of telling the story, however non-linearly, in a manner that should get his DP an academy nomination (if, of course, the academy ever got wise to nominate for cinematography for a documentary). And, on top of this, despite knowing partially the outcome- mainly, of course, that Petit lived to tell his tale to the camera as did his (once) friends and lover- it's still thrilling and even suspenseful to see all of this buildup if one isn't entirely researched on the details.

But it's not just about the build-up and execution of that tight-rope walk, although when Marsh gets the chance to show his subject walking across this or other examples he puts it to beautiful, heart-aching music that transcends the material just enough. The man himself, and the people who knew and/or worked under him, takes up most of the time in the story. Petit is a curious fellow who can ramble like any energetic and, obviously, passionate Frenchman, and confesses how he's always been a climber since a child and loves the aspect of showmanship when he can (when not wire walking, he juggles and rides a unicycle, a lovely if strange clown).

We also see his effect on others, like his friend Jean-Louis who co-planned the WTC project, and his lover Annie Alix who found him irrisistable and barely spent a moment worrying what would happen to him. And then there's the assorted 'characters', like in any good noir, that spring up as entertaining and interesting both in present and retrospect form; even a guy with one of those *real* twirling moustaches comes forward and talks, as well as one particular member of the crew who spent 35 years smoking pot and also during the WTC job (Marsh has a wonderful way of sort of 'introducing' them as well, in a walk-in profile and name tag). Hearing them expound about the mechanics of the job, and of Petit's personality and effect on them all, for better or worse as a kind of partially blind optimist, is also a major part of the appeal in Man on Wire.

While Marsh possibly leaves out some possibly intriguing details about Petit after this job ends (save for the immediate details about his sentence and a brief, Clockwork Orange-filmed 'fling' with a local girl), and here and there finding him or even the film pretentious isn't out of the question, so much of it is alive and enthralling and even spiritual to a certain degree that I could forigve most of its possible faults. Just seeing some of that 8mm and film footage, shot at the practice sites, and the stills of Petit's walk late in life, is something that's hard to even put into words how to feel. I'm almost reminded of the wonder one feels when seeing the physically demanding art of Jean-Cristo, who also finds specific locations to pursue his craft. You can't say it specifically, but you know it's art, as is Marsh's film itself.

What does Philippe Petit do now? Is he Professor of Advanced Balance at the Sorbonne? Is ha a therapist dealing exclusively in acrophobia? He seems to be a man so specialized that he was meant in life to do only one thing, at one time, and this film is about that moment and shows why a moment--a half hour, actually, in the early morning of August 7, 1974--can define a life and reshape one's perceptions. After the long slow methodical buildup, when the moment comes, calmly accompanied by a famous piece for solo piano by Eric Satie, it is so awesome, so still, so transcendent it makes you cry. No question why this film needed to be made.

Why is it that walking across a wire up in the air can be an aesthetic experience so exalted it brings you to tears? I don't know, but that's what 'Man on Wire' is about.

Philippe Petit is a clown, a sprite, a magician, an athlete, and a dancer. When he was seventeen, before the World Trade Center was even built, he knew it had to be his. It was as if it was invented just for him. . This was his greatest exploit. His triumph. It was to make him world famous.

A 'funambule,' the French call them. A tightrope walker: the epitome of risk-taking Only this time he increased the risk. Like his earlier walks between towers of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris and pylons of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, only more so, Petit's walk on a wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the tallest buildings in New York City, was illegal, a 'rififi,' a break-in, a caper. Some call it "the art heist of the century." But it's not an ordinary heist. They stole nothing, except the air, our breath. Petit and crew didn't take anything out. They took in a ton of equipment, most importantly enough heavy wire and support wire to secure his pathway across the towers.

If you could make a documentary about a successful robbery, it might be something like James Marsh's film about this event. There is the conception, the reconnaissance, the gathering of accomplices, some of whom out of wisdom or fear opt out, even up to the last minute. The false start and bailout. The months of rehearsal. The miniature mock-ups of the top of the towers (handsome, and in wood). The trial runs and on-scene observations, the skillfully made false documents and identities, the changes of costume (for Petit himself, businessman, construction worker, and the ballet shoes and black velvet costume of the tightrope walker And of course Petit and company were documenting all of this. Marsh has admirably gathered all the images, plus simulations, plus the present-day talking heads, several in French, the others in English. This time simulations seem quite justifiable. There are things we need to see--particularly the crew dodging and hiding from guards on the towers.

It's all like a game; a lark. And at the same time, lethal, dangerous, and a defiance of the laws of man and God. The simulations are appropriate because this is all so unreal anyway. Why not add a little fakery?

Philippe Petit is more than a little bit strange. And in some indefinable way he is also quintessentially French.. Not only has he an incredible insensitivity to danger (and drive to overcome it), but this diminutive, almost weightless fellow has his unmistakably Napoleonic side, his grandiosity. But also playfulness. One of the best moments is when he is being arrested and photographed (charge: trespassing; event description: "man on wire"), he takes a policeman's uniform cap and balances it on his forehead by the bill, then flips it onto his head. His exploit had made him a celebrity and a mascot. He enhanced life, made a partly clunky new landmark beautiful and remarkable.

After the event, he knew he was famous. How can you ask me if I'm thirsty, he says to a psychiatrist, when 300 journalists are waiting to interview me? And his first act after release was, as somebody put it "to bang a groupie," which he himself describes as "disgusting." Maybe he was steadier out on the wire, where he remained for half an hour, high over New York, without a net, crossing and re-crossing eight times by his friend's count. And then afterwards, somehow things were so bent out of shape that he ended two key relationships--with his girlfriend and his collaborator (both of whom help narrate this film).

This is troubling, but Petit is also wise, a saintly kind of man, immune to ordinary temptations (except groupies?). When asked why he'd done it, he said: "If I see three oranges, I have to juggle. And if I see two towers, I have to walk." The psychiatrist judged him "same and ebullient." His was a pure act, an existential declaration of joy, an example of how to live life daily to the fullest. "Every day for him was a work of art," says his girlfriend. "L'art pour l'art," art for art's sake, is his motto. All of which is pretty thought-provoking, and may be inspiring. At a time of many excellent documentaries, this one seems indispensable. It provides a very pure kind of thrill. Needless to say after 9/11, the buildings gone, the recreation of this moment evokes nostalgia and loss.

Actually Petit has done much since the event. Right afterward the charges of trespassing and criminal conduct were dropped with the promise that he would perform juggling acts for children in Central Park, and he was given a permanent pass to the towers. A policeman interviewed at the time says when he watched, he knew he was seeing something unlike anything he'd ever see again. Sometimes you do know. When he was interviewed for this film, he was artist in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.