Man on Wire Film Review

Posted on 01. Aug, 2008 by Administrator in Film/TV

by Brent Simon

On August 7, 1974, a wiry, 24-year-old Frenchman named Philippe Petit climbed out on a cable extended between the as-yet-unfinished, 110-story World Trade Center towers, 1350 feet above the ground. With no harness or safety net, he pranced about for 45 minutes, crossing back and forth across the chasm eight times, even pausing to lie down on the wire and feign a nap.

In chronicling this audacious sociological art prank, the thrillingly engaging documentary Man on Wire pulses with the brio and whimsical bravado of misspent-weekend adolescence, when outrageous things were attempted just because. Powered by Petit’s sly charm – a strange, mischievous mixture of caginess and circus clown showmanship – the movie has the spirit and soul of a noir-soaked flashback thriller, in which much is already given, and the roughly five percent mystery is chewed over in tantalizing fashion.

Director James Marsh is an eclectic filmmaker who’s given audiences both the trippy, non-fiction film Wisconsin Death Trip and The King, a Southwestern American pastoral of dormant menace, starring Gael Garcia Bernal. In Man on Wire, Marsh interweaves dramatic reenactments with both amazing home video footage from the era and present-day interviews. Even these latter bits aren’t straightforward though; a high emphasis is placed on image (a la Errol Morris’ moody, artistic recreations), and even the recruited crew member who flees the scene has a theatrical recounting of Petit’s feat.

Winner of both the Audience Award and Grand Jury Documentary prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Man on Wire is structured like a heist film, and to a certain degree we know the outcome – because here’s Petit talking to us, quite alive – and paradoxically this only colors and deepens our experience.

The scene set, a bit of early biography gives way to an introduction to all the players, and several of Petit’s other feats of high-wire derring-do, like walks between towers at the Notre Dame Cathedral and Sydney Harbor Bridge. In New York, Petit and a few acquaintances – one good friend and a haphazardly recruited bunch of pot-smoking loafers – began conducting reconnaissance and surveillance work that would of course these days be taken as terrorist advance scouting. Figuring out a way to game the site’s security measures was only the beginning, though; there were also mathematical calculations to account for wind, for which exacting replica models helped plan for this variable.

With these and all sorts of other outrageous details, Man on Wire’s tale somehow becomes an even more jaw-droppingly unlikely one. Forget about the act itself. Between the years of spanning research, hiding quietly from guards for hours on end, and using a bow and arrow to launch a mono-filament wire across the 200-foot chasm between buildings so that the cable could then be reeled across… well, it’s downright tiring, and makes you appreciate the view from the ground even more.

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