Man on Wire

Man on Wire came to Hot Docs having already won some serious hardware. At Sundance last January, it took both the jury prize and the audience award for best documentary. So it wasn't surprising that last Wednesday's Hot Docs screening was jam-packed.

It's not hard to see why the film is popular - the story is irresistible. In 1974 a French street performer pulled off one of the greatest stunts in modern history: he strung a steel cable between the Twin Towers, and high above the morning crowds performed an hourlong high-wire act between what were then the world's tallest buildings. Since then, the stunt has largely been forgotten everywhere except in New York. And of course we all know why it could never be repeated.

The story is amazing. And director James Marsh, a Brit living in New York, has an interesting track record: he moves between documentary and drama, and in the mid-90s made a quirky little film called The Burger and the King: The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley. That film apparently ran afoul of the Presley estate, but now, happily, is available on YouTube. So far all this all looks promising indeed.

So, how's the film? To quote Robb Reiner of Anvil: "one word... OK, two words... no, three words:" the film is a great ride. It's is a mix of fantastic interviews, who-woulda-thunk-it archive, and re-enactments that add just the right element of absurdity. It doesn't matter that we know how the story ends. (No spoilers here: we know that Philippe Petit is alive, and that, given that fact, there would be no film had he failed to perform the stunt.) Marsh does a great job of establishing the characters and the stakes, and then following the multiple threads of the story to the climactic moment. It's not just a story of an obsession, but of young love, friendship, and a bank heist - Petit and his team liken the stunt to a bank robbery in which no harm is done.

The subjects are passionate storytellers, some of them clearly oddballs to this day. Petit himself is a sprite who relishes the telling of the story as he relives the greatest accomplishment of his life. And what really puts the film over the top is the footage that Marsh and his team uncovered - never-before-seen 16mm film of Petit and his friends at home in France, practicing wire walking, testing various schemes to get the steel wire from one tower to the other, and generally being exuberant kids.

But ultimately, it's Marsh's storytelling that makes the difference. He makes us care about the characters, and sets out the stakes so well, that ultimately the suspense is not in whether Philippe will live or die, perform the high-wire act or get caught, but in what will happen to him and his friends afterwards. The World Trade Center stunt is a beautiful performance. But the heart of the story is in the lives of the players.