Man on Wire - James Marsh

On September 11 1999, when the first reports of the attack on the World Trade Centre started pouring in, it seemed too unreal to be true. After the dust settled, the media started rifling through the bookshelves of contemporary extreme fiction to find parallels. It turned out, none of their nightmarish plotlines could come close to the devastating current affairs.

It was not the first time fact trumped fiction at World Trade Centre. On August 7 1974, a Frenchman named Philippe Petit, conquered the twin towers. He didn't do it with with screaming jet planes but with breathtaking beauty and amazing grace. A one-of-a-kind 'funambule’ or high wire artist, Petit ambled back and forth for forty five minutes on a metal cable strung between those two towers, four hundred and fifty metres above the ground.

Man on Wire (2008) directed by James Marsh is a film documenting this feat of fantasy, all of which is incredibly factual. And just like the feat, the film, constructed like a first-rate thriller, keeps you in the nail biting will-he-won't-he mode till the very last moment.

It all started on a rather dull day in 1968, when Philippe Petit, seventeen years old, was sitting in a dentist's office and flipping through a magazine. He stumbled upon an article about the plans to construct the two tallest skyscrapers of the world side by side at New York City. There was a hazy artist's impression of the towers, quite poorly printed, that accompanied the article. He drew a line joining the two towers, visualized himself walking on it, tore the page in the guise of a fake sneeze, pocketed it, walked out of the dentist's office and as they say, never looked back.

Even at that age, performing on a high wire was a consuming passion and after that day, the passion found its Mt. Everest. In the opening sequences of the film, a split screen shows the tower in its various stages of ascent and Philippe's childhood, adolescence, youth in a slide show of photographs - side by side. As if he had commissioned the tower in order to conquer them.

Everything he did from then on, became just warm-up or a build-up before the grand finale. The relentless practice and his first feat of illegal high wire walking between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in June 1971 was followed by an encore on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in June 1973. The Twin Towers were also keeping pace and were nearly ready to be scaled. Philippe Petit decided it was about time he got ready to be on top of the world.

The way he went about the preparations was marked by the burning passion of a possessed man and the ice-cold precision of a scientist. The first location recce brought him to the conclusion he could have reached five years ago. It was simply impossible. The structure was four hundred and fifty metres high (the highest man-made structure in the world at that time). The wind was strong enough to blow a person away like a dry leaf. Rigging and guy lining the high wire would take hours and so would the hauling up of nearly one tonne of equipments up hundred and ten stories. And all of it had be done behind the back of the strict security. The best possible scenario could be an arrest. The worst possible could be the death of a dear friend followed by being imprisoned with assistance in a manslaughter for the rest of the team. Philippe carefully weighed the pros and cons and said, "It’s impossible that’s for sure. So let’s start working."

Co-dreamers of this impossible dream were a ragtag bunch of old faithfuls and strangers found by serendipity - his lover, Annie Allix, two American goofballs who couldn't speak a word of French, Jean-Louis Blondeau – childhood friend , Barry Greenhouse, the crucial inside man and many others. 'Le Coop' or 'The Coup' began.

It will not be right to get into the details of how a potent mixture of espionage, disguise, research, practice, identity theft, and bow helped them inch closer to summit. And it will be extremely callous on the reviewer's part to reveal how romantic discord, panic attacks, nasty surprises and false starts almost sent the coup hurtling down hundred and ten stories. There should be no explanation either about how a naked dance by Philippe Petit on top of the North Tower under a starlit sky on August 6 1974, brought it all back from the brink. Because then you would be denied taking the incredible journey yourself, every turn of which you must experience in full.

On the foggy morning of August 7, 1974 Lower Manhattan woke up to a dangerous, foolhardy, glorious dot between the two towers of World Trade centre, dancing, pirouetting and occasionally walking. Like every policeman before who had arrested him for his acts of unprecedented physical poetry, the NYPD sergeant too waited reverentially for him to finish first. "I was watching something somebody would never again watch in his whole life." He said. Philippe Petit was eventually arrested and found guilty. The charges were disturbing the peace, trespassing and disorderly conduct. "If you do a small show for kids, all charges will be dropped." He was said, which he did, and not only did he walk away scot-free but also as an overnight international celebrity. The ending was not so happy for the rest of his comrades, one of whom was expelled from the United States.

The title of the film quotes the police report that led to Philippe Petit's arrest. What dry judicial prose utterly fails to describe, the hybrid of actual and re-staged footage in the film achieves brilliantly. It's no mean feat and knowing that in advance, Monsieur Petit refused to grant the director film rights unless he was allowed to take an active part in every aspect of the film. The new footage is so seamlessly blended into the old that after some time you give up guessing which young Petit is real and which one is an re-enactment by a lookalike actor. In certain key scenes, where the doer Petit steps back and the dreamer Petit comes forward, he is played by exuberantly young Paul McGill - a masterstroke of the director.

While your eyes and heart devour the rapidly unfolding film, your brain can't but think what kind of a person would want to do a thing like this and more importantly, why? His present avatar - passionate, elfin and with all the disarming charm of an artist, a showboat and a conman combined, seems to give a vague answer. Since his childhood, he was a single-minded little climber and nobody could stop him. As he grew up the passion for putting up a beautiful show joined a street criminal's sense of serious mischief. A lifelong fan of cops-and-robbers movies, he was egged on equally by the beauty and the lawlessness of his goals. More importantly, he had the rare gift of making others see the dream through his eyes, or as said by one of his accomplishes, "He was selling the concept so hard, as if he was selling a timeshare or something." But at the end of the day, a work of art is its own explanation. Or we can just drop the analysis and listen to Jean-Louis Blondeau's wise words, "The important thing is, we did it."

9/11 is not even mentioned once in the film, and for a good reason. Marsh explained that Philippe Petit's act was "incredibly beautiful" and that it "would be unfair and wrong to infect his story with any mention, discussion or imagery of the Towers being destroyed." If the real world couldn't preserve the timelessness of the feat, he surely could, in the reel world.

Besides winning an Oscar, a Sundance audience award for best documentary, another 26 awards & 7 nominations, Man on Wire wins something else every time it's screened. It wins back our faith in the oft-repeated words, "If you want something, nothing is impossible." You better not dare to believe otherwise.

Watch a trailer for the documentary here: