Man on Wire (2007)

Directed by: James Marsh | 94 minutes | documentary

That is special, a film that is about illegal intrusion into the Twin Towers. A group of men plans an action on the Twin Towers and manages to sneak in unnoticed, with a chest full of stuff, and can, under the nose of the inattentive guards, stretch a cable from one tower to the other, and then get to it. to walk across it at dawn. It could also have been men with bombs.

This documentary will therefore evoke mixed feelings among many New Yorkers: on the one hand a happy feeling because it shows interesting images of the planning and construction of their loaded towers, but on the other hand frustration because it also shows how easy it is to ostensibly it is illegal to desecrate these temples of western power.

Anyway, that’s not really what ‘Man on Wire’ is about. It is, of course, about the fantastic performance of Philippe Petit, who managed the impossible. Of course it is quite something to be able and dare to walk or ‘dance’ on such a thread, besides it is also unbelievable that he found a team that helped him and that they managed it together. but the most incredible is the fact that Petit balanced on a thread for 45 minutes at a height of more than 400 meters without batting an eyelid.

Or not? Was the collaboration the most important? The friendships? And the fact that the others had a hard time letting him go in the end? That’s also an interesting aspect of the Sundance Film Festival and IDFA-awarded film, which raises these questions between the lines. Emotional states, you notice it in some of the interviewed teammates, who to this day cannot keep the charge of the whole event inside.

Philippe Petit also wrote a book about it. So along the lines of: I have climbed the Himalayas or wintered on Novaya Zemlya and I feel I need to share the power and inspiration of this event and everything around it with the world. One of those books that are given to managers on training weekends, under the motto: read this and then you know: you can achieve anything you want. And of course not alone. You need others for it, always. But in the film you can also see that Petit has always been the inspiring factor, which was highly regarded by the rest.

That is also the reason why he became popular among Americans after this well-prepared stunt. He is cut from the same cloth as the founders of their nation. He is the example of a rebel who decided not to ask permission to fulfill his dream, something that seems to be in the blood of Americans, and yet: after the walk between the two highest towers in the world, they kept asking Petit ” why?”, because apparently they can’t imagine someone doing something ‘just like that’, they want clarity, certainty, control. As a true Frenchman, however, Petit could only answer this: “I wouldn’t know.”