Man on Wire a Soaring Achievement

August 7, 1974. Frenchman Philippe Petit illegally rigs a wire connecting the newly built Twin Towers in New York City, at that time the two tallest buildings in the world. For nearly an hour he walks, performs and dances atop the wire before finally stepping back atop the opposite building and is arrested by a bewildered and amazed police department.

Philippe Petit in Magnolia Pictures' Man on Wire

James Marsh’s documentary Man on Wire is one of the most engaging, exhilarating and absolutely effervescent pieces of nonfiction filmmaking I've seen this year. Using magnificent still photography, old archive films and imaginatively restaged recreations, the director takes viewers back right to the very heart of this daredevil escapade. But it is the words of Petit and his co-conspirators themselves who make this aria soar, their remembrances and insights weaving an intoxicating spell absolutely impossible to resist.

The movie plays like a real-life Rififi, but the planned heist isn’t something as blatantly illegal as a bank robbery but instead a death-defying stunt where the only treasure to be found is the glory of inhumanly magnificent accomplishment. Marsh dives right into this gang of stuntmen with the same relish Jules Dassin took in assembling his cadre of criminals, each one of them becoming complicated figures relishing their roles in this timeless endeavor.

In other words, these guys mean business, and even when the disagree they are all still so obsessed with Petit’s childhood dream of greatness they’re still willing to fight with every last breath to make it become a reality. In fact, it is those arguments between the wirewalker and his closest collaborator Jean-Louis Blondeau that, next to the feat itself, give the film the majority of its almost impossible to stand tension. Theirs is a give-and-take friendship that stretches the boundaries of human endurance, the twosome a pair of iron-willed schemers constantly in dire need of making sure their voices and opinions are met.

If they are the ones supplying the movie with its conflict, then Petit’s former girlfriend Annie Allix is the one who gives it its heart. Her recollections of the events and her profound feelings of euphoric emotion during its execution absolutely killed me, her words of rapture tugging my heartstrings and bringing a cascading shower of tears to my eyes throughout their telling.

It’s hard not to watch this and think you’re viewing a glorified (if much more electrically alive and suspenseful) Ken Burns documentary splashed across the big screen. It’s a valid argument, but the still photography here is the kind that makes you catch your breath. More, Marsh manages to capture imagination and make it soar to heights you usually only associate with powerful Grade-A literature, not with a documentary feature. 

By the time it was over I felt the urgent need to run to my computer and look up just about everything I could find on Petit and his exploits. Man on Wire made me look at my own dreams, hold them next to my heart and contemplate what it would take to make them a reality. This might just be the picture’s greatest achievement, and if even a smidgen walk out of the theater wondering the same than this will be one documentary, much like the glorious achievement it documents, will probably last forever.

Film Rating: êêê1/2  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  2008 SIFF Blog by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  2008 Seattle International Film Festival Home Page
-  Man on Wire Theatrical Trailer