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Peter Wild is filled with joy by this film of one man's tightrope walk between the twin towers.

One thing a great many documentaries have in commmon - no matter how rigorous, enthralling, compelling, astonishing, thought-provoking or otherwise they are - is this: documentaries have a tendency to be somewhat depressing. This comes in part from the fact that documentaries can, at times, pick up on things you know a little bit about with the intention of giving you the full picture; it just so happens that 'the full picture' isn't likely to offer much in the way of cheer. Take pretty much any documentary from the last 12 months - Crude Awakening, Taking Liberties, Terror's Advocate, RFK Must Die!, About a Boy (the Kurt Cobain doc not the Hugh Grant vehicle), Jesus Camp, Ghosts of Cite Soleil, Manufacturing Dissent - all of them are great in their own way, all of them are recommended for a variety of reasons but none of them can in any way, shape or form be said to be anything approaching life-affirming. Which, you may argue, is just as it should be. But it does mean that, every once in a while, you do hanker after something that fills you with joy, that confirms the hope you hold in your heart of the irresolute ingenuity of man and that has you, leaving the cinema, bouncing off the walls with the thrill and excitement of what you've just seen. James Marsh's Man on Wire is just such a documentary.

If you're not familiar, Man on Wire concerns a Frenchman, Philippe Petit, who walked upon a tightrope between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Centre in 1974. What's so thrilling and exciting about that, you might say? Well, the entire enterprise - the entire illegal, artistic enterprise - was conducted much like a fanciful bank heist. Think The Lavender Hill Mob directed by Damien Hirst. Part of the film concentrates on the way that Philippe Petit and his gang (a couple of French friends, an Australian, a few Americans and - of course - 'the inside man') case the joint, perform a couple of smaller dry-runs (walking between the spires of Notre Dame in Paris in 1971, making his way between the north pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge a couple of years later) and limber up for the big job presented by the World Trade Centre. But that - itself, quite, quite wonderful - is only part of the story. Alongside the daring walk itself, we are treated to Philippe's own story, his rebellious youth, his early life as a street entertainer who was occasionally wont to pick the pockets of his audience and the brilliant moment his eye first fell upon that most glittering of prizes, the World Trade Centre (he was in the dentist's chair at the time). As a viewer we know that another eye later fell on the World Trade Centre, an eye with a completely different intent, but David Marsh, quite rightly I think, ignores the comparison - knowing that the image of the towers standing strong acts as powerful message enough: no matter how bad the world may seem or can get, there will always be people who try to make things better in their own way. Man on Wire is a powerful testament to that fact.

 

Peter Wild on 22nd August 2008
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