Man on Wire (2008)

Submitted by corwin on Thu, 23 Apr 2009 9:06pm

-1.0000000 Bolls

When I went through and revised how my movie review posts are handled on the site, specifically when I added a page to list them by rating, I realized that I watch way too many awful movies, and have reviewed far too few good ones. So when I sat down to watch Man on Wire on Dustin's suggestion, I knew I finally had something good to write about.

On August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit set out to do the impossible. He and an international group of accomplices snuck into the World Trade Center to string a wire between the Twin Towers so Philippe could walk across. After years of planning (Philippe had know he had to do this since the day he saw an article about the start of construction of what was to be the tallest buildings in the world), numerous setbacks, and a harrowing night on the roof, they pulled it off. A quarter of a mile above the streets of New York City, one seriously crazy Frenchman walked a two-hundred-foot tightrope for the sheer beauty of the act.

Man on Wire is a documentary film based on Philippe's own book about the experience, To Reach the Clouds. A combination of interviews, archival footage, and reinactments, much of the movie is shot as a "heist film." It's both one of the best documentaties and best heist films I've ever seen. Philippe really draws the viewer in with his narrative and his enthusiasm for what he has accomplished. The movie goes far beyond a dry recitation of the story and takes you back through all of the events of Philippe's life which led, apparently inevitably, to his big day in New York, le Coup, as he calls it. A wire-walker and performer from an early age, he had peformed similar stunts at the Notre Dame cathedral and Sydney Harbour Bridge, but the Twin Towers was his most ambitious and most dangerous walk.

Both the insanity and the sheer beauty of the act are brought out in the movie. Several of the shots of him planning and executing the walk actually gave me vertigo, and my television isn't terribly high quality. I can only wonder how it would have been in high-definition. The cinematography was gorgeous, and I'll forever have the image of a man apparently walking on air between the Twin Towers etched into my brain. Over thirty years later, there is still a lot of emotion in the interviews, and the combination of excitement and terror at the sheer enormity of what they were trying to accomplish is infectious.

There's plenty more I could say about the movie, but I don't want to give any spoilers. The story and the various relationships forged and ended really have to be seen. I highly recommend Man on Wire, and it easily comes in with a full negative one Boll.