Review of Man on Wire (2008) by Alvin Y — 27 May 2011

Easily one of the best documentaries I've ever seen, Man On Wire swept me off my feet not with spectacle but with a certain quiet recognition of the incredible events it chronicles - a team of young, rebellious 20 somethings who rigged a wire across the twin towers that their mascot, Philippe Petit, walked or as one police officer comments, "danced," across for forty- five minutes. The reenactments are superbly done, and director James Marsh keeps the film at a short 90 minutes to keep it from getting boring. Perhaps the most surprising thing was the eloquence and insight of the comments by Petit and company. His ex-girlfriend Annie, for instance, said of meeting Petit for the first time "he courted me... and then my life was all about him. it was as if I had no destiny of my own... I was following his destiny." Viewing the movie as a character study of Mr. Petit offers another layer to film - this man, who seems wholly self-consumed and unaware of the potential problems of any such idea he stumbled upon the emotional pressure he was putting on his friends who could have aided his death, speaks frankly even when discussing the aftermath of his stunt which indirectly ended many of his friendships with people close to him.

But despite his own shortcomings, viewers cannot deny Petit as the man who did something that none of us could ever imagine: he pinpointed his dream and he achieved it. "The towers were built for him." Annie comments at the beginning of this powerful and poignant study of triumph and aspiration. And in the end, it is the not the actual nineteen seventies footage depicting a tiny man walking the line between life and death that communicates this theme the most; it is a pencil drawing Petit drew on a wall beforehand - two rectangles and one, sloping line between them. It is this thin curved line, this gossamer thread connecting two shapes that signifies the whole expanse of the human spirit.