Man on Wire, round 2.

Man on Wire, not only in theaters but also actually attracting sizable audiences, is about Philippe Petit's famous walk in the clouds on a cable stretched between the roofs of the two towers of the World Trade Center on August 7, 1974, two days before Richard M Nixon resigned from the presidency. James Marsh's documentary begins as a parody of a caper movie, following the now-obligatory approach of using devices usually associated with fiction to to shape a documentary's narrative. This time, it works.

A group of Frenchmen and their American accomplices pile into a van - a la The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974) or The French Connection - and sneak in workmen's clothes up to the roof of one of the WTC towers. Their plan is to suspend a wire from one of the towers to the other, to enable the high-wire performer to walk between the buildings.

Updated through 8/4.

Petit did it, as we all know, ending up in a jail for psychiatric cases (long enough for that to be part of his legend) and on the front pages of newspapers around the world, although the achievement of this elfin Marcel Marceau on a tightrope seemed to last all of 15 minutes, since Nixon fell so hard so soon afterwards. Nixon would be pardoned by his vice-president, Gerald Ford, and Petit worked out a deal to avoid any punishment for his very pardonable acts if he would put on a juggling and tightrope show for New York kids. Sounds surprisingly humane. That was a different New York.

Black and white imagery evokes that different city. Back then, the World Trade Center towers were already a kind of symbol for people outside the US that they never really were for Americans, or at least for New Yorkers who were used to tall buildings and knew that the builders of the towers had to go begging for tenants. The very existence of the towers made them something to conquer for Petit. We would see years later how that idea could be taken to a violent extreme. Bear in mind that a group of guys in rented vans were already trying to bring the towers down in 1993. Security wasn't much better then than it was when Petit and company snuck through in 1974.

Man on Wire makes extensive use of reenactment sequences, many of them ingenious, which will no doubt infuriate documentary purists. It's hard to know how Marsh could have told his story without them, since his location is - to put it carefully - no longer available. There are far more of these scenes than in Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure, where the reenactments served more as billboards and bookends for scenes. They could still be trouble for the literal-minded (as was the case when SOP collided with the critics), but the lightness of the story and the verisimilitude of the action keep you going.

The music in the film about performance stirs up the mood effectively - generic ominous pacing from Michael Nyman (this movie's Philip Glass) during the plotting of the act as if clouds are gathering, fanfare of Vaughan Williams and Grieg as the team members motivate each other, and meditative solo piano by Eric Satie when Petit is finally alone on the wire. Obvious or not, the soundtrack builds the atmosphere. [That said, let's keep Godfrey Cheshire's reaction in mind as well - ed.]

Still, Marsh's documentary is a better reconstruction of the crime than of the time - I would have preferred a more generous flavoring of that era's New York - although the incredulity of one plotter on Petit's confinement, however short, in a psychiatric unit, shows an aspect of the gap between French and American culture: "We weren't crazy, we were stars," he says in outrage. And he was right.

The intrepid Petit was just as vulnerable to the temptations of celebrity as anyone, as you'll see in the film's sober ending. Part of the allure of being on top of the world was also being onstage alone, which seems a lot less dignified. But ambition doesn't always end up as a group thing. See this film, and then compare it to Werner Herzog's documentary from 1974, the same year as Petit's walk, The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, an extraordinary look at a solitary young man defying heights and flying.

PS: Man on Wire achieved something extraordinary, earning more than $50,000 in its first weekend. If you don't think that's extraordinary, check Box Office Mojo for the numbers other docs have racked up. Of course, it's not the money (as they all say, with every drop of the sincerity of craven politicians), but maybe it really is too soon to write the obituary for the theatrical documentary just yet. Let's hope so.

- David D'Arcy

Chris Barsanti, writing at Filmcritic.com, finds this an "unaccountably thrilling story... One of the best things about Man on Wire is how little it tries to decipher Petit's actions, even with the copious amount of time it spends interviewing him and his accomplices."

Online listening tips. Petit and Marsh are guests on On Point; Ambrose Heron talks with Petit, too.

Updates, 7/30: Roger Ebert talks with Petit, too.

The Guardian's Ben Walters watches Petit perform now, on the street.

Update, 7/31: Online viewing tip. Brandon Harris with Marsh and Petit.

Updates, 8/1: And the film's opening in the UK: Peter Bradshaw (Guardian), Trevor Johnston (Time Out) and Kevin Maher (London Times).

"Petit's girlfriend at the time, Annie Allix, offers some of the most moving testimonials, recalling how, as a shy young woman drawn by Petit's charisma, she gave up on her own dreams for years to help him follow his," notes Slate's Dana Stevens. "But the eloquent Allix is gallantly (and Gallically) accommodating. She speaks without bitterness or resentment of how she and Petit drifted apart in the wake of the event: 'It was beautiful that way.'"

Update, 8/4: "The best design movie of 2008 is not about a typeface. It's about a tightrope walker." Michael Beirut in Design Observer on "the timeless lesson of the power of a simple idea, beautifully realized."

Posted by dwhudson at July 29, 2008 7:55 AM