Man on Wire explores the space between art and stunt
Documentary focuses on French high-walker Philippe Petit's 1974 daring and illegal walk across the Twin Tower buildings
As the sun rose on Aug. 7, 1974, Philippe Petit stepped upon a cable stretched across two hundred feet between the Twin Towers. For 45 minutes he went back and forth eight times, precariously balancing on a tightrope 110-stories and nearly 1,400 feet above the city ground. Petit's act was not mere walking. He pranced, knelt and laid down on this thin strip of medal. In a press conference afterwards a New York City police sergeant soberly described the act as more apt to dancing.
Man on Wire is the new documentary directed by James Marsh. The film was originally entered into the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary and Audience Award for best Documentary.
Petit is a French high wire artist (the French word is 'funambule') who built his reputation illegally traversing wires between the Sidney Harbour Bridge and the Norte Dame Cathedral in Paris.
As Petit recalls, as a young teenager he saw an article about plans to construct the Twin Towers, which would be the two tallest buildings in the world. From this moment on, he possessed a monomaniacal obsession with crossing between the two buildings.
The film centers on the six and half years that went into planning this elaborate stunt. We hear the retrospective accounts of the participants, who seem to remember every slight detail of the act, and with considerable amount of consistency between them.
The movie unfolds as a heist movie, in which they sneak into the World Trade Center and labor the entire night avoiding security and assembling the 200-foot cable.
However, unlike the standard heist film, there is no prize, no treasure. For Marsh as well as the participants themselves, "why?" is the wrong question for it fails to recognize the mystery that art possesses. As Jean-Louis Blondeau, one of central planners, put it, "the important thing is that we did it."
The avoidance of motivation makes the film all the more captivating, profoundly delving into existentialist issues that are ordinarily susceptible to clichés and pseudo-philosophizing.
Man on Wire is the new documentary directed by James Marsh. The film was originally entered into the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary and Audience Award for best Documentary.
Petit is a French high wire artist (the French word is 'funambule') who built his reputation illegally traversing wires between the Sidney Harbour Bridge and the Norte Dame Cathedral in Paris.
As Petit recalls, as a young teenager he saw an article about plans to construct the Twin Towers, which would be the two tallest buildings in the world. From this moment on, he possessed a monomaniacal obsession with crossing between the two buildings.
The film centers on the six and half years that went into planning this elaborate stunt. We hear the retrospective accounts of the participants, who seem to remember every slight detail of the act, and with considerable amount of consistency between them.
The movie unfolds as a heist movie, in which they sneak into the World Trade Center and labor the entire night avoiding security and assembling the 200-foot cable.
However, unlike the standard heist film, there is no prize, no treasure. For Marsh as well as the participants themselves, "why?" is the wrong question for it fails to recognize the mystery that art possesses. As Jean-Louis Blondeau, one of central planners, put it, "the important thing is that we did it."
The avoidance of motivation makes the film all the more captivating, profoundly delving into existentialist issues that are ordinarily susceptible to clichés and pseudo-philosophizing.
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