Philippe Petit is not your ordinary Frenchman. Yet, in some ways, that is exactly what director Robert Zemeckis wants you to think about Petit — that he is an ordinary charming Frenchman with his beret, his baguette tucked neatly under his arm and his silly hobby of walking on wires. That is the deceptive opener to Zemeckis’ thrilling film. To do what Petit ultimately does — illegally throw a wire between to the two towers of the World Trade Center and entertain New Yorkers for 45 minutes — requires equal amounts of intensity and insanity. Probably Joseph Gordon-Levitt is much too charming to really capture the darkness apparent in Petit but there isn’t a misstep in The Walk that can’t be forgiven once the man goes on the wire.
It’s clear from the outset that Zemeckis plans to show how it really must have felt to stand atop the World Trade Center and set about walking across the 1300-foot-high chasm between on a wire. We know that’s where he’s going with this movie. We know he has the skills, the money and the technology to take us there. We are well prepared that the movie is biding its time until it gets to those dazzling visual effects.
Thus, it can feel a little distracting waiting for the story to play out before the movie turns into the most exciting display of visual effects of the year (only Star Wars has the potential to top it). One feels a sense of wanting the story to hurry up along so we can get to what we’ve been waiting for. Maybe there will be a few million out there who didn’t watch Man on Wire and thus have no idea who this crazy Frenchman is and why he did what he did. They might be interested to know how he met his girlfriend, why he liked to walk on wires, how he learned to do it, what it took before he and his team came to America to tackle the World Trade Center.
The cast are all sufficient to great, though there isn’t anything in in any of those performances that can match what it is about this film that is so spectacular. Joseph Gordon-Levitt manages a French accent decently enough, with nothing embarrassing there, and he really is in complete possession of his own body, which is key to the character.
We follow Petit through his young life of wire walking, to his romance with the woman that would help him achieve his “coup” and finally, the movie really begins. Once they’re in New York, embarking on the challenge of stringing up his wire and all of the complications that stand in his way — the careful planning, the dodging of police, the secret passageways, the precise timing of weight and measurements — the film comes alive with suspense and magnificent POV shots of the high wire act. Zemeckis comes at the visuals with a carnality that is seamless. It feels real. It looks real. All that’s missing is what it must have smelled like up there.
More than that, it goes deeper, to that place inside us that still hurts when we think about those massive towers burning and crashing to the ground. We look at them and we think of the bodies on fire throwing themselves out of windows. We think of the war after it. We think of how much our country has changed. And damned if we don’t miss the sight of those big blocky buildings — a triumph of human ingenuity, a symbol of the United States as world empire.
9/11 is never forgotten in Zemeckis’ telling. It is everything, really, because what Petit did was transformed them into art, into wild things of beauty that much be confronted. He saw them. He fell in love with them. He had to put up his wire and attempt the ultimate walk.
One man looks at those massive towers and plots to bring them down. Another looks at them and thinks “I have to put up my wire there.” The documentary Man on Wire gave us everything we needed to know about that day Philippe Petit walked on a wire between the twin towers. It could give us what Zemeckis just gave us — a chance to feel a tiny fraction of what it must have been like to see the world from way up there.
Of all of the terrible ways America has caused so much harm, that a Frenchman once looked at something we built to show our financial superiority and call it beautiful does change the way we see our country. It alters our perception the way sunlight wrenches the drab colors from the leaves to make them shine more brightly. When Petit walks across the space between the two towers, his tiny body doing the impossible, it is everything all at once: life, death, risk, reward, success, failure. It is the uniquely human gift of turning what defines life into what makes art.
This is looking like a BP contender more and more, along with Steve Jobs. If Mockingjay 2 and The Force Awakens can hold up their end of the bargain and win over critics, this will be finally an Oscar bst picture race to savor. Add Ex Machina to the field, and arthouse vs. mainstream will finally be a reality.
For heaven’s sake, can people stop having “opinions” on movies they have not seen, based on what they have heard in the press and on other people’s reviews. I don’t get it.
The internet is telling me people were upchucking in the bathroom after seeing this.
Antoinette : “I actually didn’t watch MAN ON WIRE. Does that mean I won’t “get” this?”
No, but, from all accounts you also won’t “get” Petit’s true character, which came through in spades in MAN ON WIRE.
no awards buzz?
I’ve also heard troubling things about the film’s first half. I never thought this film was particularly necessary, and didn’t like what I saw in the trailers, and the mixed response to this film before it gets around to depicting Petit’s stunt seems to somewhat confirm my fears. Reviews for the film’s first portion range from middling to outright scathing.
I have a lot of issues with Robert Zemeckis as a filmmaker – I find his style shallow and inconsistent, I find his collaborators (Alan Silvestri et al) uninspiring and I can’t find anything to grasp onto in what he tries to achieve as an artist. Frankly, there seems to be too little art there to consider him an artist. But I’ll definitely see this, if only for the wire scene.
MAN ON WIRE is one of the best movies of the past few years. Period. (no asterisk because its a Documentary).
By most reviews this unnecesary “live action remake” is pretty mediocre stuff until the ending. Sound like one of the endless Disaster Movies where you have to wade through 3/4 of the movie before you get to the “good stuff”
99 HOMES– Andrzej Wajda—>Ramin Bahrani. Academy Award nominations for Garfield & Shannon, please? ★★★★ (A-)
MAN ON WIRE had no footage of the actual walk. None exists. That’s reason enough for a fictional treatment, especially given the use of IMAX 3D.
MAN ON WIRE had no footage of the actual walk. None exists. That’s reason enough for a fictional treatment, especially given the use of IMAX 3D.
That’s right. You make it for the same reason Petit walked it: because it’s there and because you can.
Antoinette:
“Man on Wire” will probably give the insight, Zemeckis won’t be bothered to include in this film. More background, more character developement… I guess the reaction to this film will depend if you can feel the possible plot holes or personality voids with the knowledge of the character’s personality that “Man on Wire” actually gave.
I hope Zemeckis does something special, because I never thought that “Man on Wire” needed to be translated to narrative feature so soon, and I’ve seen this project as pure oportunism.
I actually didn’t watch MAN ON WIRE. Does that mean I won’t “get” this?
I actually didn’t watch MAN ON WIRE. Does that mean I won’t “get” this?
No.
Beautiful piece, Sasha.