"Man on Wire" 3.5***

MAN ON WIRE 3.5*** ( A 2008 rental) You think that documentaries are boring? Well, you need to see “Man on Wire” which won this year’s, 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary. " It is a fascinating documentary that chronicles how a talented and fearless high-wire walker, Frenchman Philippe Petit, assembled a team of friends/accomplices and how they helped him to carry out an astonishing feat. On August 7, 1974, Phillipe stepped out on a wire (really a thick cable) suspended 1350 feet above the ground between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. He performed with no safety net for almost an hour. He crossed between the towers eight times before he was arrested for what later became known as "the artistic crime of the century."
This was stunning unimaginable feat that took him months of secret preparations to accomplish.. The British documentary film-maker James Marsh, after a long but exciting introduction about Petit's previous feats (walking on a high-wire across Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and later on Sidney's Harbor Bridge in Australia), presents Petit's Twin Towers feat like it was a carefully planned “bank heist’… presenting in detail all the aspects of the preparations with a rhythm that catches your breath….. how they gained access to restricted areas of the World Trade Center, the meticulously planning of all the technical aspects of the rigging of the wire/cable, and surreptitiously recruiting “insiders” to help pull off the caper .
This is a suspenseful, at times humorous, drama that moves you to the point of amazement. What the film is ultimately about is the story of a courageous man who, against all logic and all odds, walks back and forth on a wire, high up in the sky, at times sitting and relaxing in-between, then almost dancing, like a Fred Astaire of the skies, for more than 45 minutes, challenging man, nature and the whole world. But what is still more exciting is the beauty of it all, of those wonderful images of that man up there, alone and happy, enjoying his walk in the clouds. A breathtaking film worthy of its Oscar!!
NOTE: Arrested after his successful walk, the words "Man on wire" appeared on the violation written up by the N. Y.P.D., which is how the film gained its title .

Clark