walked, ran, lay, jumped and danced

Man On Wire – James Marsh

Perhaps absurdity defines us best as human beings. In the natural world we can see endless examples of organisation, planning, preparation; even in rudimentary form, the use of language. Dogs and Primates are credited with ‘selfless’ acts that in humans we would call altruistic. But when 23 year-old Frenchman Philippe Petit, shortly after a misty dawn on August 7th 1974 stepped out onto an illegally stretched 60 metre cable 1368 feet above a largely unwitting New York, he was doing something that no other creature, man nor beast could, nor would do. For reasons hard to explain, it is an incredibly moving moment to watch: the definitive moment in James Marsh’s superbly constructed docu-drama just as it was the definitive moment in the lives of the 6 men who helped make it possible and the quite extraordinary man who did it.

It is fitting that this man was French: the meticulous preparation, reconnaissance, secret because this was to be a criminal act, and the long and careful planning involved would put any military manoeuvre to shame. But to what aim, for what purpose was all this reason, this rigorous mental effort assembled? To enable a man to walk, run, lie, kneel, dance for almost an hour on a cable the width of one’s thumb above an astonished, open-mouthed, disbelieving crowd of New Yorkers.

Descartes meets Camus in the sky – on the edge of death for more than 45 minutes among the clouds. If this sounds fanciful then as you watch Petit step over the void it is hard not to think of this as a definitive existential act: his, absurd, choice; his life totally in his own hands. The authorities said he may not do it; reason said he could not do it; common sense said he should not do it; but he did it – because he just decided he would. Not for money: by its nature no one knew in advance; and Petit took up none of the immensely lucrative offers made afterwards, saying:

”I didn’t say no on principle, I said no because I looked at the people and heard their words. And everything was wrong…..there was a different language, it was a different point of view. It was not me. And I cannot be not me.”

“I am not honourable and courageous in my way of seeing life – I just can’t help it.”

(To Reach The Clouds – Philippe Petit 2002)

He did it because he believed he could. And then decided he would. Or die in the attempt. That’s as real and authentic as a person gets to be. It was a defiant rebellion against conformity, convention, the ‘rules’, set by anyone or any group that seek to limit the individual’s aspiration or will.

James Marsh has fashioned an absorbing, tense, amusing narrative to give shape to historical events. The actual participants, straight to camera are articulate and evoke powerfully the sense of uncertainty, risk of failure that never left them in the months leading up to the event. Petit’s earlier high wire illegal ‘coups’ between the towers first of Notre Dame and later the Sydney Harbour bridge were dwarfed by the sheer outrageous scale of the Two Towers ‘caper’. These dramatised sequences tell of dissention, doubts, that needed the uncompromising will and self-belief of Petit to control and disperse.

A still beautiful Annie Allix describes evocatively the fear and doubts she held in about her lover’s absurd plan. She communicates wonderfully to us the sheer power of emotion she felt as she looked up and saw the tiny figure of Petit lying back on the wire so far above. “It was so beautiful” she said and she was right. Without rancour she tells us that those moments in the sky changed the lives of everyone involved. In Petit’s triumph of accomplishment lay the death of their love.

We are drawn deeper into the events by close friends Jean-Louis Blondeau who shot the arrow carrying the initial fishing line across to Petit on the other tower, and almost missed: and Jean-Francois Heckel, tears of recollection welling-up in his eyes, who engineered a safe secure cable, after some heart-stopping moments. And Jim Moore whose iconic photographs will live forever and without which there would have been no film. Petit laughing at the policemen waiting to literally drag him back to earth; saluting New York with a grand sweep of the arm; playing chase with the cops getting almost in their reach and then spinning round and off again.

Getting into the towers is shot like a heist movie and has all the tension and suspense of the genre. Five hours Petit and Heckel had to wait motionless under tarpaulins until the security guards stopped patrolling. Some dramatic licence here I’m sure but why not, the essential truth at the core of the film is beyond dispute.

There are some I’m sure who will dismiss the facts and therefore the film as simply the foolhardy antics of a man slightly mad. Disreputable because illegal and life-endangering. Well I guess as a judgement of cold clinical reason there may something in that. But for anyone with imagination, an admiration for the eccentric, the individual and yes a sense of the absurd, the sight of the tiny figure putting his life on the line for no reason other than he loves to do it and wants prove he can, stills cold lifeless reason and stirs the adventurous soul in all of us.

For Albert Camus, Man is absurd for still expecting good, believing there is value in the world, when all the verifiable facts tell us otherwise. Well for just under an hour 32 years ago high above New York, one of Camus’ compatriots became absurd man incarnate and showed us unequivocally that there is something beautiful and valuable, and profoundly human about doing something immensely difficult, highly dangerous, terrifying, and utterly pointless – just for its own sake.

Don’t miss this one – it is simply unique.

Filed under: 5 stars, Documentary, Drama, General, Hollywood, James Marsh, Philosophical