I've been wanting to watch 'Man On Wire' ever since hearing about it on the BBC Breakfast News a few months ago but had to wait until last week to catch a one-day-only performance at my local cinema.
The film is a brilliant documentary about the French performance artist, Philippe Petit who in 1974 tightrope walked between the newly built twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. It was totally illegal and had to be planned meticulously (over six years) like a heist, not too different to the 'Oceans 11' movie but this actually happened!Throughout the film all the various members of Petit's team talk about their roles in planning the event, aided with lots of film footage and photos from the time. Each person gave their own perspective on what happened, some of the stories were really funny.
The way the documentary was put together gave it a really exciting feel but for me, the heist element of the film was the most interesting.
They had to wear disguises to gain access to the buildings, work in two separate teams, avoid detection from the security guards and under the cover of darkness shoot wire between the two towers and anchor it without causing attention. And on top of that, Petit then did the famous walk between the towers, not once, but eight times over the space of 45 minutes.
These moments are brilliantly shot, black & white reenactments mixed with original footage and narration from Petit and the others involved.
Its fantastic, funny and totally overwhelming. I recommend it to everyone to watch, preferably at the cinema to get a better sense of the shear scale of everything.
Click here to listen to a 2006 BBC Radio Nottingham interview with Philippe Petit.
The only piece of criticism I have for 'Man On Wire' would probably be down to the reel of film my cinema had. Since it was just a one day only screening and for it to cater to all that wanted to see it the version I saw included subtitles for everyone and also audio descriptive subtitles, e.g; "Radio noises", "Bells ringing". That did distract me from viewing the film at times as I found myself reading the subtitles for the English speaking parts. I'm hoping the DVD release will have these as options to be turned on or off.
