By Greg Oguss

“Life should be lived on the edge of rebellion,” the legendary wirewalker Philippe Petit proclaims near the close of James Marsh’s award-winning documentary Man on Wire. While Petit is an accomplished author, lecturer and performer, Marsh’s documentary focuses primarily on Petit’s incredible high-wire act in 1974 in which he spent 45 minutes cavorting without a harness on a wire strung across the Twin Towers. In the film, Petit goes on to explain that only by refusing to “repeat oneself” can one “live on the tightrope,” as he has done, in whatever path you choose. Petit’s half-mad poetic French soul has driven him down more than a few paths in life. Growing up in Paris in the 1960s, he began as a self-taught street performer, juggler, magician and pickpocket. Today, he is a world-famous daredevil, writing on his own exploits as well as the art of pickpocketing, among other subjects. The question of why someone, least of all a man with no formal training, would decide to wirewalk the Notre Dame Cathedral, a suspension bridge in Sydney, Australia, and the Twin Towers doesn’t interest Petit. Why?, that’s a very “American” question he says at one point in the film, sounding disgusted by the fact that after pulling off his death-defying stunt, this was the only question which the mainstream media seemed interested in. Well, I am an American, albeit a member of the alternative media. And it’s also a question which interests me. Sorry, dude.
Thankfully, Marsh’s stylish film is also interested in these kinds of questions. Marsh boldly mixes dramatic reenactments and archival footage of the team as they plan what is essentially a heist-style infiltration of the Towers. The visuals are as stylized as anything found in the glossiest dramatic feature. But Marsh’s style isn’t superfluous, with shots of Nixon’s famed “I am not a crook” speech and excerpts of a press conference by New York’s former Mayor John Lindsay all recreating the tumultuous feel of America in the early 70s. The use of stock footage also helps to convey why Petit was embraced as a hero by New Yorkers during an era when heroic figures were in short supply. One of the most interesting moments in the film occurs during a voice-over interview that plays over archival footage of Petit practicing on his wire at his “World Trade Center boot camp,” as he and his co-conspirators dubbed their training facility in rural France. At an early age, “I climbed on everything,” Petit says. “Why, who knows? That’s a question for the psychologists,” he remarks, again stressing how disinterested he is in what sent him up on that wire 1,350 feet above a Manhattan sidewalk without a net. At this moment, the film makes a move much like Martin Scorsese’s dueling voice-overs in Goodfellas, cutting to the voice of Petit’s former girlfriend Annie, while Marsh’s camera continues to watch him on the wire. Annie explains Petit always had a “bad-boy side” and was attracted to certain “rebellious” little pursuits. Annie suggests this was why the “bank robbery” aspect of the Twin Towers plan—having to dress up in disguises, enlist a handful of Americans as “inside men,” and sneak in their equipment overnight—appealed to Petit. Around this time, he started watching heist movies obsessively. After this revelation, Petit begins to seem not unlike Tony Soprano, a gangster who takes his cue from old gangster flix.
“Because that’s where they keep the money,” the famed bank robber Willie Sutton is reputed to have said when asked why he robbed banks. It’s a great line which emphasizes both the “thrill of it all” and the “well, duh” aspects of the daredevil life. Petit doesn’t utter a line half as memorable in the film, although he is charming and charismatic. According to historians, it is unlikely Sutton ever uttered that line. But it was part of an embellishment of a myth that led to Willie Sutton’s folk hero status which isn’t dissimilar to the status that Petit has attained. Sutton’s outlaw behavior, like that of his contemporaries Charley “Pretty Boy” Floyd and Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, crossed lines which Philippe Petit wasn’t willing to cross. Petit placed only himself in danger and put his friends in minor criminal jeopardy. Those early 20th century outlaw-heroes placed the lives of many people at risk, some of whom they gunned down. Given this, Man on Wire probably suggests Petit as a better hero to emulate for those interested in living their lives on “the edge of rebellion,” as his good-natured soul often seems to balance out the excesses of his outlaw personality. Nonetheless, the film’s unexpectedly bittersweet conclusion, which finds the present-day Petit friendless and alone with only his wire to keep him company, suggests that all professional risk-takers pay consequences in their personal lives, even if they manage to beat the odds and turn cheating death into a highly successful long-term career. (Opens August 8th)

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