Man On Wire

Contributed by Mike Fishman

An excellent, essentially flawless documentary, especially given that the event it relates, Phillipe Petit’s high wire walk between the World Trade Center Twin Towers on August 7, 1974, was not filmed. The story goes (as told by co-producer Maureen Ryan at the screening/Q&A I attended in New York at the Thalia Theater) that after pulling up the wire, which had slipped over the side of one of the Towers and had to be pulled up some one hundred feet, the would-be camera-man didn’t have the strength left in his arms to hold up the Bolex camera he had brought with him and could only manage to capture some shots with a still camera. But, as Ryan pointed out, if the walk had been filmed, this film probably would not have been made. The footage would have been out there, undoubtedly on YouTube, we would have watched it, been impressed but not particularly moved, and said “Cool, what’s next?”

Instead, the filmmakers relied on still photos, video footage of the crowd in the street (including Petit’s girlfriend/accomplice peering up anxiously at the dot in the sky), music and, most importantly, editing, to create a lyrical, stunning moment come alive – the moment when Petit steps out onto to that wire.

The fact that this moment is created evocatively engages the viewer, rather than just feeds him/her. The most basic tools of filmmaking: what we see, what we don’t see, what we imagine in the space between. The viewer is invited/forced to create their own image of the actual action, and thus is created a moment of poetry and wonder, and a deeper understanding of the audacity and boldness of the event; of the daring, of the death-defying daring, of Phillip Petit’s walk. If we had just been given the event as footage, it would have been merely historical; something to marvel at certainly, but something spoon-fed. Instead, we are given a documentary that pulls us in, that we participate in. To see that with an audience becomes an experience. For myself, to see it at the Thalia Theater, which I remember from years ago in its former decrepit glory (sloping cement floor, column smack dab in the middle of the theater, but the place on the Upper West Side to see art films back when the term really meant something), was an interesting sidebar.

I would have liked the film to dwell a bit more on the fact that the walk took place nearly the same day as Richard Nixon’s resignation (August 9), pushing the latter story off the top fold of many newspapers, and the fact of the Twin Towers at the time, and up until Sept. 11, 2001, being widely reviled by New Yorkers as ugly monstrosities. But, bravo to the filmmakers for avoiding any direct referencing to 9-11, although certainly the images of the buildings going up, those steels columns that were all that remained above ground on September 12 and that were burned into our collective memory – the images of those being hoisted up is chilling, and potentially depressing. As one audience member movingly expressed it during the Q&A, she had to allow herself to give in to the story at hand, and enjoy the film for what it was about rather than dwell on what happened 27 years later.

Visit the excellent website for the film here: Man On Wire.

Directed by James Marsh.