Man on Wire

Movie Review: Man on Wire

Year of Release: 2008
Country of Origin: UK, USA
Director: James Marsh
Cast: Philippe Petit, Jean-Francois Heckel, Jean-Louis Blondeau, Annie Allix, Mark Lewis

Plot outline: A look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City's World Trade Center twin towers in 1974, what some consider, "the greatest artistic crime of the century" (IMDb).

The subject of James Marsh’s engrossing documentary Man on Wire is so good that it’s a wonder no one has thought to make a movie about it before. It’s not that the story is in any way a secret (on the contrary, it made international headlines in August of 1974), but it is quite possible that enough time has passed to allow it to fall into the deeper recesses of public consciousness; those who were alive at the time murmur something along the lines of “Yeah, I seem to remember that …,” while many of those who were born after the event, which would come to be called “the greatest artistic crime of the century,” might very well have never heard of it. Which is precisely what makes Man on Wire such a treat: It mines recent history in a way that makes it seem new and invigorating, reminding us of how wonderfully, blissfully deranged human behavior can be. James Marsh, who has previously made both feature movies and documentaries, turns Man on Wire into a nail-biter of a thriller, which is all the more extraordinary given the fact that we know Philippe Petite is going to pull it off. The question becomes “How?” How are he and his associates going to sneak into then-still-under-construction World Trade Center twin towers with hundreds of pounds of equipment (including at least 200 feet of three-quarter-inch steel cable weighing 450 pounds), make it to the roof, and set up a complex tightrope apparatus that can sustain high winds more than 1,350 feet above the streets of New York City? The unfolding answers to those questions is what compels Man on Wire along as it draws you into Petite’s artfully inspired scheme that still amazes those who pulled it off. Of course, knowing that the Twin Towers are now gone gives the movie an expectedly bittersweet tone, which Marsh never explicitly milks. Petite’s antics were technically criminal, but as Petite himself noted both at the time of his arrest and today, there is no easy “why” to explain them. To do so would reduce his death-defying accomplishment to simple psychodymanics and tear it away from the high-wire art and life philosophy he so fervently pursued. (JK)

My judgement: ***1/2 out of 4 stars