Daring 'Man on Wire' a high-flying achievement

Rob Thomas — 8/29/2008 12:00 pm

Walk into "Man on Wire" and the opening scenes might make you think you're watching a tense heist thriller from the 1960s, something like "Rififi" or "The Red Circle." We watch a group of young men tensely working on some kind of elaborate, seemingly dangerous plan that involves infiltrating a building. One of them comments fatalistically, "Best-case scenario, we all get arrested."

But Philippe Petit and his crew weren't planning on stealing a million dollars or a rare diamond. Instead, they wanted to steal an ordinary day from New York City and give it something unforgettable instead.

In 1974, Petit spent 45 minutes walking on a tightrope strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Actually, "walking" doesn't quite cover it; he danced, kneeled and saluted, even lay on the wire as if he were relaxing in a hammock.

James Marsh's wonderful documentary "Man on Wire" gets the maximum amount of tension possible out of such an incredible feat. But as Petit himself excitedly recounts the six years of preparation and planning that went into those 45 minutes, the film goes beyond its thrills to become a fascinating and life-affirming portrait of a complicated man determined to "live on the edge of life."

Petit's obsession with the tower stunt began before construction even began, when as a teenager he came across a newspaper article detailing the plans. Marsh ("Wisconsin Death Trip") wittily cuts back and forth between footage of the towers being built and of Petit honing his wirewalking craft, including some daring tightrope walks at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris and between two spires of a Sydney suspension bridge.

In the age of CGI, it's hard to explain how amazing it is to see the footage of those walks, and know that the black-clad figure seemingly suspended against the bright blue sky is real, and not a visual effect. The film really puts you in the shoes of those New Yorkers who looked up from their daily lives one day and saw something utterly unimaginable.

Petit proves to be a very engaging on-camera guide for his detailed scheme, which included not only engineering a way to quickly build a tightrope between two skyscrapers, but also using false identities and forged papers to get into the towers in the first place. Marsh uses black-and-white re-created scenes to great effect, seamlessly editing them in with real footage Petit and his cohorts shot as well as present-day interviews.

Backing Petit is a cast of characters as colorful as in any heist movie, from the girlfriend who finds herself subsumed to Petit's "destiny" to the New Yorkers who show up for the event stoned out of their minds.

But Petit remains the mesmerizing core of the film, a man who seems determined to wring every drop out of his life. After he was arrested by New York cops unable to conceal their own admiration, reporters kept asking him why he did it. "'Why?' Such an American question," the Frenchman pooh-poohs.

One notable omission in "Man on Wire" is any reference to what happened to the Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, but that's for the best. The rendezvous those hijackers had with the towers was all about death, and has no business being connected to Petit's rendezvous, which was about life.

------------------------------------------------------------------

MAN ON WIRE

4 stars

Stars: Philippe Petit, Annie Allix

Rated: Not rated, but contains brief nudity

How long: 1:34

Where: Sundance

For fans of: "Ocean's Eleven," "Rififi," people with really good balance

Rob Thomas — 8/29/2008 12:00 pm