Man on Wire

I saw "Man on Wire" yesterday, a movie that's gotten universally good reviews (an unheard-of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes).

A documentary of a notorious wire (tightrope) walker, the magic of the movie for me was in the characters and the dynamics between them. It's the story of Philippe Petit, a Frenchman obsessed with wire-walking in ever more daring situations. From a home setup, he graduated to stealth rigging of wires between the towers of Notre Dame, across the Harbor Bridge in Sydney, and finally, in his crowning achievement, between the twin towers of the World Trade Center (in 1974). The movie concentrates on the planning and execution of this last caper.

The man is a consummate showman, infecting everyone around him with his enthusiasm: his girlfriend, his friends, the World Trade Center employees whose help he enlisted, and even one of the arresting officers after the WTC prank, who said what he did should be called "dancing." Not content to simply walk the wire, Petit would balance on one foot, kneel down, even lay on the wire halfway across.

The movie was paradoxical and moving.

What should have been Petit's biggest triumph was his downfall in my eyes. His newfound fame went to his head, and his first action after being released from jail after crossing between the WTC towers was to hole up in a hotel with a new groupie, abandoning his friends and girlfriend to wonder where he was. His relationship with his girlfriend and his best friend fell apart shortly afterward. The girlfriend, 24 years later, seems to still idolize him and feel it was inevitable that he would move on to other things. The best friend, however, is clearly still haunted by loss of their friendship, which is never fully explained in the movie.

Petit does not seem to be bothered by the human toll of his obsession. He is depicted as being alone in the world now, save for the wires set up in his backyard, and that suits him fine. Should we be happy for this man who's achieved what he wanted and seems completely self-sufficient? Or should we pity him that his fixation has left no room for the other things he might have done with his life?

While his triumph left me depressed, the images of the World Trade Center were strangely soothing. We've all become accustomed to the scenes from 2001, including the fall of the towers and the steel reinforcements surrounded by debris. The footage in this movie was of those same reinforcements being erected, of the workmen who built them, of the architectural details, and of the intact roofs, with a concentration on how their features could be used to make a man's dream come true. It made me hopeful to remember that there were good elements in the buildings' histories and they're not entirely defined by their ending.