Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here with a brief word about a great new film that is slowly making its way through art houses around the country. Structured like a great thriller, this documentary from director James Marsh (THE KING; WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP) is an thoroughly entertaining account of a French high-wire walker named Philippe Petit who made a name for himself making illegal walks across the tops of the world's most famous buildings, including Notre Dame Cathedral, getting arrested and rarely paying any kind of serious price for his actions. In August 1974, Petit and a small crew of co-conspirators planned a walk between the barely finished towers of the World Trade Center. The plan was both highly elaborate and 100 percent reckless, and it's fascinating to see how Petit and his multi-national crew came up with a plan, attempted to think of every possible problem and then rehearsed the mission like as if it were a military operation. Director Marsh doesn't just tell us about the day of the event itself. He wisely creates a profile of Petit, who clearly has an ego the size of the buildings he is conquering. Fortunately for us, he documented (with home movies and photos) every step of the process, going back six and a half years before the stunt, when he first read about the plans to build the towers and knew he would be walking between them. The members of his team are also interviewed, and its revealed that some members were more reliable than others, some thought the feat was impossible and some just followed Petit like a cult leader. False documents, hiding from security guards and dumb luck all contributed to putting Petit on the roof of one of the towers, and we discover the complicated process of getting all of the gear to the roof, stringing a cable between the two buildings in a way that would minimize sway and flexural tension and making the walk in as safe a way as possible. We can't forget that even the slightest wind made the buildings sway a bit as well, and that had to be accounted for as well. Much of the film is done using recreations of the actual sneaking into the World Trade Center, but that never really takes away from the enjoyment of MAN ON WIRE, since there is an abundance of genuine footage from the time as well. My favorite scenes involve the self-proclaimed (with a hand-made sign) "World Trade Center Association," which was actually located in the French countryside, where Petit and his team marked off the exact dimensions of the two towers and where he practiced incessantly his perilous walk. The concentration on his face when he's walking the wire is mesmerizing, and he doesn't just walk; he kneels, lays down on the wire and performs other panic-inducing tricks. The plotting documented in MAN ON WIRE is like that of a bank robbery or some terrorist event. The fact that it's for an artistic expression almost makes you forget the location of the stunt. No one in the film ever mentions the fate of the towers some 27 years later, and there's really no reason to do so. What the film and Petit make clear is that these Twin Towers were not built to be occupied by businesses; they were meant to be conquered by one man with a balancing pole walking across a wire some 1,350 feet in the air. This is a fun and exciting viewing experience, with just enough bizarre characters in it to make it entertaining as well. Seek this one out, folks. -- Capone capone@aintitcoolmail.com
