man on wire

The weekend's rental was man on wire.

Man on wire was a documentary that came out a few years ago about Philippe Petit, who walked a high-wire between the world trade center buildings.

I was afraid that for me, the film would be something of a horror story. I suffer from severe acrophobia (fear of heights) and so the idea of watching some bloke walking a wire between two building some 400 and odd metres up sounded like it wasn't going to be much fun.

But the reality is that there isn't any actual footage of him doing the walk. There are some photos and some stuff shot from the ground, but this happened in 1974, just shortly after the towers were finished, so it's not like people had access to cheap camcorders.

In fact, in a way that would be my only real criticism - there's not much of him actually doing the walking. I know that's weird for someone who hates heights, but the build-up to it is so good and the documentary so well done that it feels like that's the only missing piece.

Also, there is footage of Petite doing a kind of preparatory walk between the towers of the Sidney bridge, so it kinda seems a shame that there's not anything from up on the towers. They also don't reconstruct that part, although there is reconstruction of most of the rest of it.

I guess the problem there is the elephant in the room - 9/11 when the towers were destroyed. The destruction isn't mentioned at all in the documentary and in a way it's actually good that it isn't. As it's been made, the film is like a tribute to the towers (and what Petite did of course) without dwelling on all the horrible aspects. It's like a memorial, rather than an obituary, I guess.

The tone of the film is just right. It's played like a sort of heist movie, which in many ways it was - what Petit did wasn't legal and he was arrested for it. But it's also a rather cheeky film. There's lots of little funny bits and you get the distinct impression that the whole caper was always just on the verge of collapsing.

What sees it through is Petite himself, shot basically seems to be so confident that it will happen that any set back simply doesn't phase him. He describes doing the walk as his dream and it's almost like because it's his dream it will definitely happen.

My favourite part of the film comes almost at the end, though. There's a nice feeling of French-ness throughout and the bit in question is very 'French' indeed. I won't spoiler it, but the thing that amused me is Petit tries to explain it, but really he should have just shrugged his shoulders and gone "I'm French - what do you expect?".

Which isn't a criticism, by the way - as I said, I liked it.