December 26, 2009: Man on Wire
I had seen Man on Wire (2008) before, but it was before I started writing reviews, so I need to cover it now! I watched this with my extended family over the holiday break, and it’s a fascinating and very accessible documentary for the whole family. This Oscar-winner for Best Documentary Feature last year chronicles the early life of Philippe Petit, a street performer from France who in the 1970s made a habit of doing high-rise wire (i.e. tightrope) walks in prominent and illegal places such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Cathedral at Notre Dame, culminating in an insane but carefully planned stunt in which he walked on a wire suspended between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City!
The brilliant advantage this documentary has is that there is a good deal of actual film footage as well as photographs available from the time of the events, since Petit and his crew documented their preparations and his performances. Supplemented by some black-and-white dramatizations and extensive current-day interview footage with the team members, this ends up being an immersive experience and a genuine expression of how timeless the experience was for all involved. The faces have lost the radiant glow of youth seen in those grainy old films, but the passion is still in their eyes. We are able to witness the energy of the pursuit first-hand, and the memories are still strong. It’s clear that it’s an emotional journey for the team to revisit even today, with a few of them choking up upon recalling the moment of success.
Petit himself is clearly a charismatic and talented guy, and I really got the sense that people wanted to support him and help him to achieve his goals. His energy is infectious, both in the silent film footage from the early 1970s and in his present-day interviews. He doesn’t himself understand what drives him to do what he does, but he knows it’s his calling. The film itself didn’t get much into explanations of the funding for all of the transatlantic trips or the equipment needed for the World Trade Center infiltration, but a documentary on the DVD delving into the Sydney stunt in greater detail illustrates that the goodwill of people with money played a large part – people who wanted to contribute however they could to Petit achieving his vision.
There is no mention whatsoever of 9/11 in this film, which is obviously a conscious artistic decision. The towers which once stood so mightily are forever gone, which must give a bittersweet flavour to the memories for all involved and make this recollection of the experience more painful. I always loved the towers myself and spent some happy hours in my younger days standing on the roof of the one open to tourists, just enjoying the perspective and the experience. To step off the edge onto a thin wire strung to the other building is an idea well beyond comprehension for most of us, and Man on Wire respects that sentiment while at the same time convincing us that for Philippe Petit, the idea that he couldn’t step off was just as incomprehensible.
For the record, I have to say that I love how the title of this movie came about. Of course once Petit was on his wire between the buildings, the authorities were on the scene within minutes and police were waiting at both ends ready to take him into custody as soon as he was done. He wasn’t in fact done until more than 40 minutes later, after taunting police and doing all manner of stunts out on the wire before threats of picking him off with a helicopter made him fear for his safety. He was of course arrested, but the City wisely realized the public relations nightmare which could arise, and they let him go in exchange for doing some of his traditional performances for charity. In the movie, we see a photograph of the original police report, and in the “Details of Complaint” section, it simply says MAN ON WIRE.
This is how documentaries should be.
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