A top the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the high-wire walker Philippe Petit is an epic poem in motion. In Man on Wire, the sight of his accomplishment - he walked back and forth between the towers eight times in his 1974 acrobatic feat - registers, in its own balletic way, as potently as King Kong climbing to the top of the Empire State Building.
Just as Kong humanized that milestone piece of architecture, Petit did this one. Many New Yorkers thought the World Trade Center too stark, even arrogant; Petit revealed its capacity for poetry. And the director of Man on Wire, James Marsh, through close collaboration with Petit, makes us experience the towers as if they were natural phenomena, like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. When the wind whips through them, it's as if a Tolkien giant has been breathing deeply. Yet there is Philippe smiling mischievously, graceful as the Silver Surfer and defiant as Mick Jagger.
This movie about Petit's achievement is a gust of fresh air, offering the inner workings of a lark that put a man's life at risk - and also made him immortal. It not only brings the World Trade Center back to life in all its glory, but summons a pre-Iraq War America and a pre-Giuliani New York City, a country and a city of anarchic highs and lows, where citizens felt anything could happen.
Petit celebrates the World Trade Center in his walk, but he also subverts it as a symbol of corporate power. It becomes his play-space in the sky and his gift to the citizens who gaze at it starry-eyed, for free.
One of the favorite sayings of journalists and politicians is "You don't want to see how the sausage is made." Marsh's movie says you do want to see how a miracle is made, even if the details can be just as unsavory.
It quickly sketches his earlier feats of walking between the spires of the Notre Dame Cathedral and the northern pylons of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Although he obviously adores the limelight, he sickens of the controversy; if he's going to run up against (to his mind) petty authorities, he might as well set his sights sky-high.
And the way Marsh tells the story (from Petit's own memoir, To Reach the Clouds), he hoped the World Trade Center crossing would be his crowning achievement from the moment news of its design hit Europe, in 1968.
For Petit to fulfill his dream he must rely on the kindness of strangers and the hard work, inventiveness and forbearance of old friends. It helps Man on Wire as cinema that he and his French pals are handsome and spirited.
