Watching the documentary 'Man On Wire' reminded me of Edmund Hilary's comment on why he climbed Mount Everest: "Because it's there" was his reason. And "Because it's there" seemed to be the only motivation which made a mid-20s Frenchman called Phillippe Petit, illegally in August 1974, walk a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Centre in Manhatten.
English director James Marsh achieves a near impossible feat of fashioning a highly watchable documentary out of so little material. The obstacles facing Marsh were as great as those which faced Petit in 1974. For a start, it's a footnote in the history of the World Trade Centre. Secondly, there is no filmed record of Petit's walk between the twin towers. Thirdly, with the World Trade Centre now gone, there was no opportunity of revisiting the location of the event or even attempting to stage a recreation. Also, tightrope walking is an old-fashioned and rather slow form of what we now called 'extreme sports' nowadays it has been overtaken by bungee jumping and free running.
And yet from this unpromising material Marsh (with funding from the BBC and Discovery Channel) has created a film which was the winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary and BAFTA for Best British film. Marsh uses a mixture of dramatised reconstructions, 1970s footage of Petit, recollections of the participants and stills to recount the drama. The actual walk itself is something of an anti-climax as there only exists a handful of still photographs. Better are the poignant shots of the World Trade Centre being constructed in the early 1970s and the scenes of Petit and his team secretly hiding themselves inside the World Trade Centre, emerging at night and setting up their equipment on the roof , recalls many a heist movie. Critics attempting to find some post September 11th resonance (which is the sort of thing critics like to do) will be looking in vain. This is about nothing more than the adventurous spirit of a great eccentric. It was ironic that after this exceptional feat of bravery, on coming off his tightrope Petit was immediately arrested by the NYPD and sent to a local mental institution for psychiatric evaluation.
English director James Marsh achieves a near impossible feat of fashioning a highly watchable documentary out of so little material. The obstacles facing Marsh were as great as those which faced Petit in 1974. For a start, it's a footnote in the history of the World Trade Centre. Secondly, there is no filmed record of Petit's walk between the twin towers. Thirdly, with the World Trade Centre now gone, there was no opportunity of revisiting the location of the event or even attempting to stage a recreation. Also, tightrope walking is an old-fashioned and rather slow form of what we now called 'extreme sports' nowadays it has been overtaken by bungee jumping and free running.
And yet from this unpromising material Marsh (with funding from the BBC and Discovery Channel) has created a film which was the winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary and BAFTA for Best British film. Marsh uses a mixture of dramatised reconstructions, 1970s footage of Petit, recollections of the participants and stills to recount the drama. The actual walk itself is something of an anti-climax as there only exists a handful of still photographs. Better are the poignant shots of the World Trade Centre being constructed in the early 1970s and the scenes of Petit and his team secretly hiding themselves inside the World Trade Centre, emerging at night and setting up their equipment on the roof , recalls many a heist movie. Critics attempting to find some post September 11th resonance (which is the sort of thing critics like to do) will be looking in vain. This is about nothing more than the adventurous spirit of a great eccentric. It was ironic that after this exceptional feat of bravery, on coming off his tightrope Petit was immediately arrested by the NYPD and sent to a local mental institution for psychiatric evaluation.