Man on Wire (2008)

I managed to catch a preview for Man on Wire, a fine and poetic documentary about the French acrobat Philippe Petit's grandest clandestine coup: walking on a wire suspended between the twin towers at the top of the World Trade Center in 1974. (A consummate wirewalker since his teens, Petit went back and forth several times across the span and even knelt and laid down on the wire as if he were taking a snooze.) Described in his own words and through interviews with his former collaborators, archival film, and reenactments, Petit waxes lyrical about what motivates his acrobatic gift and his lifelong dream (since age 11) to walk between the two towers. (His is not the corporate mindset. Indeed, he has a great sense of humor.) The first part of the movie describes the cabal (or coterie) of friends gathered to scope out and plan what essentially amounts to a heist in reverse: smuggling in and setting up tons of equipment under the cover of night -- with guards close at hand for hours at a time. This part is full of dry humor and the audience laughed often. The second part describes the wirewalk itself. You could have heard a pin drop in the audience. Man on Wire is a documentary with heart -- but heart so intense at the time that it turns out impossible to maintain in the long term. (The caper cost Petit at least two of the closest relationships he had.) 4 stars.