Film

The name Philippe Petit may not ring any bells for anybody besides devoted fans of fringe daredevils, until you remind people of what this Frenchman managed to pull off. Petit was a tightrope walker who practiced his guerrilla art in public spaces, like the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. So when he heard about the construction of two massive skyscrapers in New York City, the gonzo Gaul knew what his next target would be. As the World Trade Center neared completion, Petit assembled a crack(ed) team of cohorts and methodically cased the joint. Then, in the wee hours of August 7, 1974, he walked across a steel cable stretched between the Twin Towers, suspended thousands of feet above the ground.

Armed with the standard operating tools of documentary filmmaking—archival clips, re-creations, interviews, ironic counterpoints—James Marsh leads audiences through Petit & Co.’s preparation and execution of this incredible feat of performance art. To look at this extraordinary movie simply as a snapshot of an event, however, is to give it short shrift. Marsh has, in effect, created a real-life heist procedural (the black-and-white scenes of the ragtag bunch infiltrating the WTC might have been plucked from a Melville flick); one of the most compelling portraits of because-it’s-there ideology ever captured on celluloid; and a ghost story. Watching this collective plot their “crime,” it’s impossible not to think of those who’d eventually choose the Towers to make a nihilistic statement, or to acknowledge that Petit’s joyous accomplishment will not—cannot—ever be duplicated. The buildings are now just a phantom presence; Marsh’s film, however, commemorates their existence in the most fitting manner possible.