Man on Wire

We saw this film at the Edinburgh Film Festival, it's European premier, and it was a packed audience. Unfortunately due to an error, the reels were swapped in the middle of the film, which threw the timing a bit but to be honest the poor organisers looked so miserable as they apologised that no one minded, and the film was just as beautiful as it should have been.

We were lucky enough to have a Q&A with the director and the star, Philippe Petit where we all asked the same old questions; 'how did it feels?' 'are you scared of death?' 'what made you do it?' but what made the experience and the film so refreshing was the personality of Petit. Of course you would assume he is a rampant egotist, he was a very good looking young man, talented, with a raft of friends happy to be involved in his dangerous and exciting endevours. Petit is actually incredibly funny and oblivious. I would describe his act not as simply entertainment but as a sublime experience, taking us to the edge of terror and death.

I was worried I'd spend the whole film with clammy hands, watching a guy on a high wire so high up, but his friend describes it so well the feeling you get watching him walk up there, it's so poetic and peaceful.

This is a very unusual film, very beautiful and exciting. I would say that it is suitable for any age but take your mum and dad, they'll love it.

For me, this is what cinema is all about, and this film is striking in that it encapsulates so much in a documentary. Man On Wire has more suspense, thrills, wonder, imagination, human spirit and inspiration than any other film I have seen in recent years. The music, composition and photography, structure and editing are all superb. Some of the shots are simply breathtaking. Some scenes in the film are incredibly atmospheric, and they will be forever burned in your mind. The film captures a human sense of achievement, drive and determination better than any other film I know. Heres the ultimate proof of this films power - the audience didn't shift until a good couple of minutes into the credits.

Oh dear. I'm in the minority on this one, but Man on Wire did very little for me.

Perhaps it's down to the unlikable Philippe Petit himself, who is surprisingly hard to root for. I didn't care for his personality and the fact that he had so much of it just exacerbated my feelings.

For a 90-minute documentary there's remarkably little actual information. My general knowledge of the incident is still almost non-existent and I only watched it last night! Too much time is spent on Petit's other exploits and the WTC walk - supposedly the focus of the film - comes perilously close to being glossed over. The basic, essential facts of the operation are recounted in an incidental manner and are buried under mumbling voices with heavy French accents.

What Petit did was undeniably spectacular - and at its best the film captures that well, with the wire walk sequence being thrilling - and I'm tempted to say it's a shame such a feat received such a poor documentary treatment, but it's an Oscar winner, and an overwhelming success with critics and audiences alike, so I'll accept that I'm just one of the few for whom it didn't work.

Easily one of the best documentaries I've seen, Man On Wire swept me off my feet not with spectacle but with a certain quiet recognition of the incredible events it chronicles - a team of young, rebellious twentysomethings who rigged a wire across the twin towers that their mascot, Philippe Petit, walked or as one police officer comments, "danced," across for forty- five minutes.

The reenactments are superbly done, and director James Marsh keeps the film at a short 90 minutes to keep it from getting boring. Perhaps the most surprising thing was the eloquence and insight of the comments by Petit and company. His ex-girlfriend Annie, for instance, said of meeting Petit for the first time "he courted me... and then my life was all about him. it was as if I had no destiny of my own... I was following his destiny."

Viewing the movie as a character study of Mr. Petit offers another layer to film - this man, who seems wholly self-consumed and unaware of a) the potential problems of any such idea he stumbled upon and b) the emotional pressure he was putting on his friends who could have aided his death, speaks frankly even when discussing the aftermath of his stunt - which indirectly ended many of his friendships with people close to him.

But despite his own shortcomings, viewers cannot deny Petit as the man who did something that none of us could ever imagine: he pinpointed his dream and he achieved it. "The towers were built for him." Annie comments at the beginning of this powerful and poignant study of triumph and aspiration. And in the end, it is the not the actual nineteen seventies footage depicting a tiny man walking the line between life and death that communicates this theme the most; it is a pencil drawing Petit drew on a wall beforehand - two rectangles and one, sloping line between them. It is this thin curved line, this gossamer thread connecting two shapes that signifies the whole expanse of the human spirit.

"Genius is a transcendent capacity for taking trouble first of all" Frederick the great by Thomas Carlyle

"Genius: the mental endowment peculiar to an individual; that disposition or aptitude of mind which qualifies a person for a certain kind of action or special success in a given pursuit." Webster's International Dictionary

This is Phillip Petit, the 25 year old who in August of 1974 walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the WTC. Yet what is that which makes a documentary on such a fantastic, quixotic accomplishment relevant to us mortals? Is it not the same kind of awe the passers by experienced when they saw that morning a tiny figure suspended above the void, the same kind of marvel the people interviewed experienced again when they described Petit's walking on air some thirty years later? What is Petit's accomplishment if not a profound religious experience, a form of divinity in itself? And it is exactly because Petit's action bears no explanation, it has no rationale behind its daring do, no tangible end by which to hold it and examine it in the light of logic. The action in the same time the reason of it. What did Petit accomplish but a monument of human perseverance, enduring will and the triumph of mind over matter?

If MAN ON WIRE is so successful at what it does, it's not only because of the feat it purports to describe but because of the path it takes in describing it. Staging it as a heist thriller, filmed in black and white in shades of noir, orchestrated like a bank robbery of sorts, the same kind of films Petit laboriously studied as he was preparing his takeover. By presenting us with real people who emote better than a lot of actors could even dream of. By placing Phillip Petit pivotal in the narration of the events unfolding, a passionate man with an almost half-mad gleam in his eye but also a love of life that leaps across the screen as utterly genuine. By adopting the skeleton of a real movie - not a sterile "went there, did that" documentary but one with a premise, plot, setup and payoff, climax and conclusion.

Filmed with true cinematographic flair, in turns suspenseful, faith-reaffirming and awe-inspiring, MAN ON WIRE is the unexpected show-stealer of the year, sneaking under the nose of Hollywood behemoths with 50 times its budget and doing what they're too sluggish to do, too dazzled by their own spectacle. A simple story beautifully told.