Man On Wire


3.5/4

Featuring: Philippe Petit, Jean Francois Heckel, Jean-Louis Blondeau

Rated PG-13 for Some Sexuality and Nudity, and Drug References

It’s not hard to imagine why documentaries are the least popular film genre.  After all, we watch movies to be entertained, not to learn anything.  There’s a lot of truth to that; when I watch a movie, I want to be told a story.  If I learn something new, all the better.

And that’s exactly what James Marsh does with “Man on Wire.”  This is not Ken Burns.  Or Michael Moore for that matter.  He uses interviews, re-enactments and photographs to tell the extraordinary story of the man who walked on a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center.

Philippe Petit has always been a climber.  Psychiatrists have posed theories as to why he has such a love for climbing things, but in the end, it really doesn’t matter.  Petit is who he is, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.  He is a master at tightrope walking, and he either has a deal with the devil or he is just an adrenaline junkie to the extreme.  Petit has tightroped across Notre Dame, the Sydney Opera House, and many other places.  He can’t explain why he is driven to do these things.  He only knows that he is.  Then he sees an ad in a newspaper about the World Trade Center towers being built, and Petit is instantly obsessing about tightroping across them.

We see interviews from Petit and his accomplices about how they planned the walk over two years, and how they recruited inside players and how some chickened out at the last minute.  Petit speaks with such passion that we understand and sympathize with this funny little man who we would otherwise think to be completely insane.  In fact, many of his friends think he’s nuts too, and they were with him when he did it!
This documentary is more suspenseful than about 99% of fictional films…primarily because it’s completely real.  

James Marsh uses our fear of heights to set us up at a tense level from the beginning, and because we begin to care about Petit, we get more and more tense with each time he and his crew are nearly foiled.

The film can be a little confusing at times and it’s really hard to keep track of who is who and how they all fit together in this extraordinary escapade.  Still, this is a superbly done documentary (I loved how Marsh had Petit use models and move around to make his point), and for anyone who is looking for some real suspense, they would do well to check this one out.

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