Feat First

The captivating story of how one man walked between the Twin Towers — on a wire.

by Cindy Fuchs

LINE OF WORK: Philippe Petit knew he'd found his calling the moment he read about the construction of the world's highest towers. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

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"Once upon a time," says Philippe Petit. "Now, that's how you start fairy tales. And actually, my story is a fairy tale." That story culminates in Petit's walking on a wire between the Twin Towers on Aug. 7, 1974. But, as recalled in James Marsh's Man on Wire, the lead-up to that spectacular end is full of intrigue, possibility and loss. It's a story of its time that looks forward to a tragic future.

The movie begins with a television screen showing Richard Nixon, trying to explain away the first whiff of Watergate in November 1973. "I have never obstructed justice," says the president. "I welcome this kind of examination because people want to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got." Next to the TV set, shadowy figures pack bags and crates full of gear, re-enacting the preparations for the World Trade Center summit. The contrast is both plain and profound: If both Watergate and the wire-walking were technically criminal acts, Nixon's was abject and venal, while Petit achieved a kind of weird, eternal poetry.

As the film recounts, the concept came to Petit some six years earlier, when, in his dentist's office, he spotted a newspaper article about the construction of the world's highest towers (1,353 feet in the air). Just 17 years old at that moment, Petit set about training for this most incredible walk, over a gap of 130 feet. "The object of my dream doesn't exist yet," he says, but he is sure this is his calling. Split screens set photos of his childhood alongside the towers' construction, as if the two entities were destined to come together, each a fulfillment of the other. Petit's professional life is rendered here as a series of preparations for the Twin Towers, his high-wire walks between the towers at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and above the Harbor Bridge in Sydney — each sensational in its own right — framed here as practice runs.

Putting together still photos, talking-head interviews and archival news footage with re-enactments and home movies, as well as a propulsive, "found" soundtrack (culled from Michael Nyman's previous film scores, including The Draughtsman's Contract, Drowning by Numbers and The Piano), Marsh's film underscores the mix of fantasy and practicality that drove Petit's work. Each stunt involves weeks devoted to research and logistics. And yet, each instance is also tinged with a sort of romance. When his longtime lover, Annie Allix, remembers meeting Petit, when she was just 20 years old, we see black-and-white footage of a backyard, and two very young faces engaged in mutual gazing. "He introduced me to his wire, a wire set up at the end of a garden. I would spend hours watching him walk," she says. "He was beginning his life as a tightrope walker. ... We became inseparable."

Her sense of enchantment helps to structure the film (especially in giddy montages of animated maps, onsite snapshots or assorted high-wire acts, not to mention patently nostalgic shots of the newly erected towers). At the same time, the documentary acknowledges potential doubts and concerns. If Petit is relentlessly enthusiastic ("The fact that the wire-walking activity is framed by death is great because that means you have to take it very seriously"), other perspectives, including Allix's, help to build suspense. For one thing, the planning and equipment for each event are daunting (the team smuggled almost a ton of gear to the top of the WTC in 1974, disguised as the construction workers who were still onsite). For another, Petit's obsession with the towers is alternately thrilling and maniacal. "He could no longer carry on living without having at least tried to conquer those towers," Allix says, "because it felt like those towers belonged to him."

Man on Wire argues that the magic of the event was a function of multiple forces, from Petit's confidence (some might say hubris) to the historical circumstances. Like Petit's feat, the towers' very existence had to do with ambition and a desire to conquer, possess and boast. If Petit is rational about the mechanics, he is resolutely philosophical about the motive. When he met with reporters following the walk, he remembers, the first questions were typically "American." He smiles, "I did something very magnificent and mysterious and I got a practical 'Why?' The beauty of it is, I didn't have any 'Why.'"

(c_fuchs@citypaper.net)

Man on Wire | Directed by James Marsh | A Magnolia Pictures release | Opens Friday at Ritz Five