Originally posted on sciy.org by Rich Carlson on Wed 17 Dec 2008 09:49 AM PST
Movie Review
by A.O. Scott
On the morning of Aug. 7, 1974, after months of preparation and years
of dreaming, a French daredevil named
Philippe Petit (Trailer) stepped into the
sky above Lower Manhattan. For almost 45 minutes he ambled back and
forth on a metal cable strung between the towers of the World Trade
Center, a feat of illegal tightrope walking that, according to a New
York Police Department sergeant who recounted Mr. Petit’s act of
physical poetry in dry press-conference prose, would more aptly be
described as dancing.
For many years after, Mr. Petit’s stunt was a cherished footnote in the annals of New York history, one of the touchstones of a crazy, awful, glittering era in the life of the city. The destruction of the twin towers in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, revived the memory of that earlier aesthetic assault on the buildings, which is now the subject of "Man on Wire" James Marsh’s thorough, understated and altogether enthralling documentary. Wisely, Mr. Marsh, who based his film on a book Mr. Petit published in 2002, never alludes to Sept. 11. That would have been both distracting and redundant, since it’s impossible, while watching a movie so intimate in its attention to the towers, not to be haunted by thoughts of their fate.
But it is also worth recalling that the trade center inspired more love posthumously than while it stood. Mr. Petit was an exception. A zealous, daring wire walker — the French word funambule is a more lyrical, as well as a somewhat more ridiculous-sounding term — he conceived a passion for the structures even before they were built.
As he recalls it (and as Mr. Marsh imagines the scene in one of many witty, unobtrusive re-enactments), the young Mr. Petit was flipping through a magazine at a doctor’s office when he saw an article about plans to construct the two tallest skyscrapers in the world side by side at the bottom of Manhattan. In his mind, and then in a series of sketches and diagrams, he drew a simple line connecting the buildings and imagined himself perched atop it.
What kind of person would think of such a thing? How would he go about accomplishing it? Why? Those are the questions that preoccupy Mr. Marsh, whose earlier films include the semidocumentary "Wisconsin Death Trip" and the fictional feature " The King".
The first question is answered largely by Mr. Petit’s own testimony. In his 50s, he is elfin and energetic, a beguiling combination of showboat, idealist and con man. And in his early, outlaw years, before the twin towers walk brought him fame and a measure of legitimacy, he combined an exalted sense of artistic mission with a street criminal’s sense of serious mischief.
Accordingly, “Man on Wire†is constructed like a heist movie, in the manner of Rififi or the revived "Oceans Eleven" franchise. Though Mr. Petit was alone on the cable that August morning, his walk in the sky was the result of a conspiracy of true believers and casual adventurers. In his two previous acts of guerrilla funambulism — at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris and on the Harbor Bridge in Sydney — he relied on the logistical and moral support of several friends, including his lover, Annie Allix, and his faithful sidekick, Jean-Louis Blondeau.
In interviews, they and some of Mr. Petit’s other confederates — including two American goofballs and Barry Greenhouse, a flamboyant insurance executive who served as the all-important inside man — reconstruct their project, which they referred to at the time as “the coup,†in fascinating detail. There were engineering problems and also challenges that seem to belong to the world of espionage, as well as the inevitable tensions that arise when a group of people pursue a dangerous goal.
Why did they do it? Rather than risking banality by addressing this question head-on, Mr. Marsh allows the answer to be at once self-evident and profoundly mysterious. A work of art is its own explanation, and “Man on Wire†leaves no doubt that Mr. Petit’s coup deserves to be called art. Mr. Blondeau, a sensitive and cerebral foil to the impish Mr. Petit, chokes up when he recalls watching his friend step out over the abyss. “The important thing is that we did it,†he says.
And without making any grandiose claims, this lovely, touching film demonstrates that the World Trade Center sky walk was an important event. The proof is in the emotions — amusement, amazement, awe — evoked by those images of a tiny human figure balancing above a void. Also gratitude. It is easy to imagine that, in contemplating the scale and solidity of those brand-new towers, Mr. Petit saw them at least partly as the vehicle of his own immortality (whether or not he survived the crossing). No one looking up at the New York sky on a hazy morning 34 years ago and seeing a man on a wire could have suspected that the reverse would turn out to be true.
“Man on Wire†is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes nudity, sexuality and drug references.
....................................................................................................................................................................from Nietzsche's Thus spoke Zarathustra, p.3,4,5, Walter Kaufmann transl.
"I teach you the
overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done
to overcome him?
All beings so far
have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the
ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than
overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful
embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a
laughingstock or a painful embarrassment...
Behold,
I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth.Let
your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I
beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not
believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers
are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they,
decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let
them go.
Once the sin against God
was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him.
To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to
esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the
earth...
What is the greatest
experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The
hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your
reason and your virtue.
The hour
when you say, 'What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth and
wretched contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence
itself.'
The hour when you say,
'What matters my reason? Does it crave knowledge as the lion his
food? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.'
The
hour when you say, 'What matters my virtue? As yet it has not made me
rage. How weary I am of my good and my evil! All that is poverty and
filth and wretched contentment.'
"Man
is a rope, tied between beast and overman--a rope over an
abyss...
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an
end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going
under...
"I
say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give
birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in
yourselves.
Alas, the time is coming
when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the
most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise
himself. Behold, I show you the last man.
'What
is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus
asks the last man, and blinks.
The
earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes
everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last
man lives longest.
'We have invented
happiness,'say the last men, and they blink. They have left the
regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still
loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs
warmth...
One still works, for work
is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment
be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require
too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require
too much exertion.
No shepherd and
one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever
feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
'Formerly,
all the world was mad,' say the most refined, and they
blink...
One has one's little
pleasure for the day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one
has a regard for health.
'We have
invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink."
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