Man on Wire: Movie, DVD Review (2009)

Directed by James Marsh, 94 minutes, rated PG-13.

At the end of James Marsh’s documentary, “Man on Wire,” Philippe Petit, who at age 24 conspired to use a tight-rope to walk across the World Trade Center towers eight times on Aug. 7, 1974, allows us into his philosophy of life at age 60.

Nearly 40 years have passed, but not much has changed.

“To me,” he says while walking across a tight-rope in his backyard, “it’s so simple--life should be lived on the edge of life. You have to exercise rebellion. To refuse to taper yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge--it’s then that you are living life on a tight-rope.”

For Petit, the dream of walking across the Twin Towers began years before when he first learned of their construction in a dentist’s office. Given their size and height--not to mention the obvious challenges they offered--his obsession with them only grew. Still, before he could tackle them, he needed to wait for their construction to be complete.

In the meantime, he chose other, more modest diversions that would prepare him for what was to come--walking across the twin towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in 1971, for instance, and later, in 1973, flying to Australia, where he walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. All of it was illegal, sure, but as one of Petit’s friends notes, nothing they were doing was malicious, so their conscience was clear.

With seamless ease, Marsh pieces together the story of how Petit was able to enter the guarded towers and pull off the impossible, with Petit himself telling much of the story with an enthusiasm that is infectious. Marsh also interviews the key people who helped Petit on his journey to that historic day. Meanwhile, he intercuts actual film footage and photos of the event, as well as using actors to reenact what wasn’t chronicled.

It’s an understatement to say that what Petit and company achieved was nothing short of timing and good luck--just wait until you see how they got beyond the guards at the towers--with Petit’s execution of the event itself all coming down to something very close to ballet. Watching him walk across towers that are no longer there goes beyond the bittersweet. What actually comes through onscreen is the beauty of those towers, and how Petit incorporated them into his own brand of performance art.

And what a performance. To see him lie down on a cable that was some 1,300 feet above the concrete that would kill him should he fall is at once harrowing, exciting and beautiful. But Petit wasn’t content to just lie down. He also knelt, offering onlookers a broad sweep of his arm as if to mark this fragile moment with the bold exclamation point it deserved. He was having the time of his life. Death was one misplaced footstep away, but for Petit, the fact that he was facing the possible end of his life entered into the equation in a positive way: “If I die,” he said, “what a beautiful death, to die in the exercise of your passion.”

When I wrote this on Sunday morning, the movie was up Sunday evening for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, a category I predicted on Friday it would win. It did and it deserved to. Here’s hoping you see it.

Grade: A

View the trailer here: