I’m guessing that your attitude toward THE WALK will change the closer you get to its breath-stealing final 40 minutes. The story of high-wire artist Philippe Petit seems almost tailor made for director and co-writer (along with Christopher Browne) Robert Zemeckis and his skills as a filmmaker who knows how to use special effects to tell a story without calling attention to the effects. Going back to the BACK TO THE FUTURE films, and continuing through FORREST GUMP, CONTACT, CAST AWAY, and even his previous film, FLIGHT, Zemeckis works best when he’s blending the visual trickery with the deeply human characters. While I certainly don’t find his string of photo-real animation works—A CHRISTMAS CAROL, BEOWULF, THE POLAR EXPRESS—unwatchable, I also rarely revisit them.
But THE WALK is a unique story because Petit (played here by the amiable Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is, in a way, himself a cartoon character, in that he pulls off feats of balance, physics, geometry, and sheer will power that don’t seem humanly possible. Perhaps for that reason, Zemeckis has chosen to paint him as a highly animated, larger-than-life being even when he’s not on a high wire. Perhaps that accurate and it may even be appropriate, but have Levitt as Petit spending a great deal of the film narrating the film—quite often looking directly at the camera, standing in the torch of the Statue of Liberty, seriously—seems like an exercise in joviality that comes across as simply trying too hard to get our attention. And considering we know that this film ends with Petit walking on a wire between the twin Towers of the World Trade Center eight times (with stops for tricks along the way), force feeding us how much of a performer he is off the wire hardly seems necessary.
That being said, once the months of plotting and training and figuring out the details of how to get a 450-lb. metal cable across from one tower to the other and somehow stabilize it are complete, the movie absolutely soars—to a height of about 1,350 feet over the early morning traffic and crowds of New York City. Even knowing what you’re walking into as a story, including how the stunt ends, Zemeckis’s skill as a storyteller still manages to extract as much suspense from the journey as possible. And nothing can quite prepare you for the way you’ll likely react seeing the Twin Towers in all their glory back on the skyline of Manhattan. Even just seeing Petit walk up to the structure at street level for the first time and touch it gently, as if he’s making friends with it, is quite moving.
With the towers still being technically in the final weeks of construction, those early moments on the roof seem all the more dangerous, as if some of the bare beams and other construction materials aren’t secure enough to play on the way Petit does when he first ascends just to admire the view. Many may not realize or remember just how much time Petit spent in New York before making the walk, surveying security guard shifts, construction schedules, which elevators went where. He also gathered a rag-tag group of locals to join his small French crew (that included his new girlfriend Annie Allix, played with the proper amount of skepticism by Charlotte Le Bon), and neither group was particularly reliable, with most being deathly scared of getting caught and going to jail (they were trespassing to make this happen, of course), and Zemeckis doesn’t miss an opportunity to portray the supporting team members as a slightly milder version of the Keystone Cops.
Since THE WALK was adapted from Petit’s own account of the events in his book “To Reach the Clouds” and he was a technical advisor (including being the person who trained Gordon-Levitt how to actually walk on a wire), I’m going to assume that much of what happens in the film is accurate to a point. (I strongly encourage you to get your hands and eyes on the Oscar-winning 2008 documentary MAN ON WIRE for the facts-only version of this story.) But the set-in-France first half of the film feels more like a version of Petit’s journey as set in some kind of mythological context. The colors seem brighter and exaggerated, the way one moment in his life flows into the next is like you’re reading the children’s version of his journey. Or perhaps more to the point, the film feels like Zemeckis is attempting to ape the works of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, which may sound glorious in theory, but he falls exceedingly short.
The key moment in Petit’s early life and training was meeting the master of the wire, Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), who not only helps Philippe perfect his on-wire work, but guides him through the world of performance, playing to an audience, and most importantly, how to pull this particular walk off without dying. The scenes between them are certainly fun as well as the highlight of the Paris half of the film, but then we have to contend with the rest of that first hour, which includes a sappy love story, a somewhat fleeting glimpse of Petit as a juggler and street performer, who sets up a low-level rope in public places when he can, before the police arrive. Eventually we get to him assembling his core French crew, including a guy who is afraid of heights and (naturally) ends up being his key assistant during the towers walk.
Perhaps even more that I did with the recent Everest, allow me to fully encourage you to take in THE WALK as an IMAX 3-D experience, or at the very least, see it in 3-D. I can’t imagine watching this film any other way. The walk itself (or the “coup,” as Petit refers to the whole event) is a staggering that will likely give you vertigo or stun you into total silence with its gorgeous execution—likely a combination of the two. Zemeckis essentially allows the wire walk to take place in real time, allowing us to experience every step of Petit’s eight times across. He got bolder with each pass, to the point where he did a few nerve-wracking (for us) bonus stunts—like laying down on the wire with the bar across his chest—and even allowing himself a brief glimpse at the gathering crowds below (we are told looking down is the ultimate no-no for people in Petit’s profession). Petit may not tumble, but I promise your stomach will.
In the same way I never condemn a good film for a bad ending, I feel the power of THE WALK’s final act (including a last line that will linger with you long after you leave the theater) is such an improvement over what comes before it that the over-achieving opening is mostly forgivable. Knowing how the story ends won’t matter in the slightest; it certainly won’t keep you from feeling the tension of every step Petit makes. The film is also a magnificent and touching tribute, not just to New York City, but to an era in the city’s history that can never be recaptured. The case was always made that most New Yorkers hated the way the Twin Towers looked when they were first built, but that Petit’s crossing someone made them essential. If you’re interested in a chronicle of events, go to the documentary as fast as you can. But if you want the step into the experience of Petit’s accomplishment, THE WALK will get you there, even if there are a few unsteady step at first.
