The Man on a Wire

Man on a Wire is the story of Philippe Petit, the French aerialist who in 1974, when the World Trade Center towers had just been constructed, tricked his way into the building with his accomplices and equipment, strung a wire between the two towers, and then walked or rather danced back and forth in thin air for about an hour, 1350 feet above the ground, while spectators below gaped in amazement, including the police who, had to wait(!) to arrest him for trespassing. They knew they were breaking the law, but they were not robbing or hurting anyone – “so, it’s wonderful,” as one of Petit’s friends says; but they had to plan the whole “coup” (as Petit calls it) as if it were a bank heist, complete with disguises, and waiting for hours in a cramped space for the night-watchman to leave the top floor. It’s an astonishing synchronicity that now, seven years after the debacle of 9/11, when a growing chorus of voices is questioning the official story of the Towers’ destruction and pointing to much more sinister agents and motives behind the attack (and hats-off to James Marsh, the filmmaker, for not even mentioning that story) we see the Towers again, in their pristine architectural glory. And there is the 25-year old sky-dancer with the lithe body of a cat and the concentration of a sphinx, who takes a few steps into the air, pauses, smiles and waves with one hand, and then lies down on the wire – so you see his form, tiny from below, like a dragon-fly high up in the mist swirling between the towers. It was an act of astonishing beauty and playful daring, inspiring all who saw it then (and now, in retrospect) to expand their sense of human possibilities. “Why did you do it?” the journalists crowding around him asked Petit, as he was being driven off to jail (he was booked and released), unable to fathom that here was an action with no ulterior financial motive. “There are no whys” he replies. Petit, now in his sixties, is the main narrator of the film, and is charmingly voluble in describing the years and months of preparation and elaborate planning. There is a scene where he and his friends are confronting the enormous technical challenges and the emotional charge between them (one of them says “I don’t want to be involved in something where he’s going to end up dead”), “It was impossible” Petit says, “so we had to do it.”
Next week: Gonzo – The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson