Susan Granger’s review of “Man On A Wire” (Magnolia Pictures/Discovery Films)
When aerialist Philippe Petit walked, even danced on a wire some 1,350 feet in the air between the towers of the World Trade Center on August 7, 1974, reporters who were covering the story and police who arrested him had one primary question: Why?
“I did something magnificent and mysterious, and I got a ‘why’ – and the beauty of it is that I don’t have a ‘why’” was then and is today his reply.
So documentary filmmaker Jordan Marsh examines how the Frenchman and his stealthy accomplices accomplished this daredevil stunt, utilizing vintage footage, re-creations and modern-day interviews.
Back in the late ‘60s, Petit was practicing in his backyard before an awestruck girl-friend, Annie Allix, and preparing himself by prancing on the pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia and the spires of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Single-minded, egocentric and remarkably persuasive, he was able to recruit a number of cohorts to help him in the obsessively meticulous planning and the strategic smuggling in of his heavy equipment, right under the noses of the security forces supposedly guarding the World Trade Center. Even the Port Authority considered his feat a publicity coup for their enormous – but unheralded – edifices.
Today, at almost 60, Petit still oozes self-indulgent pride recalling his spectacular feat, projecting his profound belief that the Twin Towers were created for him to walk between. Admittedly, there were no real consequences for his “criminal” act except the contrition of a ‘walk’ over Belvedere Lake in Central Park as token ‘community service.’
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Man on a Wire” is an engrossing, exhilarating 8, barely mentioning the tragedy of 9/11 – because it doesn’t need to.
