James Marsh turns Philippe Petit’s high-wire scheme into a gripping documentary with the suspense of a good heist film. The reconstructions occasionally labour, but the meticulous preparations and persuasive storyteller make it easy to recommend.
Man on Wire makes the preparations for Philippe Petit’s illegal high-wire walk between the Twin Towers feel like a crime worth committing. James Marsh’s documentary is gripping, funny and unusually good at showing how one person’s enthusiasm becomes several people’s hard work. He approaches the 1974 undertaking as a heist, giving the planning room to be complicated and the helpers room to matter. We can understand the practical task without ever finding the wish to do it remotely sensible.
Petit is a considerable advantage for a director making a film out of recollections. His flamboyance makes the account entertaining, but it also lets us see how the helpers might have been persuaded to join him. Marsh gives him space to tell the story without treating his enthusiasm as a sufficient explanation for everything. There is egotism here, and a willingness to ask a great deal of other people. That makes the devotion of the team more interesting than simple admiration.
Editor Jinx Godfrey keeps the interviews, archive footage, photographs and reconstructions moving at the pace of a thriller. The cutting gives the planning enough time to make sense without letting the accounts become a series of lectures. We felt anxious watching the preparations, because all that meticulous work makes the possibility of a mistake easier to imagine. Marsh keeps returning to the practical business of arranging the walk.
Igor Martinović’s cinematography helps the reconstructed passages belong to a caper rather than a dry historical explanation. They give Marsh a way to dramatise the work described by his interviewees, and most of them earn their place. Occasionally, though, their staged quality draws attention away from the people remembering what happened. The archive material is more absorbing at those points. The film already has an engaging storyteller in Petit, and does not always need to illustrate him.
The music, credited to Michael Nyman and J. Ralph, gives the planning an excitement that suits the scale of Petit’s ambition. Some familiar cues push harder than the images need. With photographs, in particular, Nyman helps Marsh sustain attention without having to manufacture more action. We would occasionally prefer a little less prompting, but the music allows pleasure into a story that could easily be dominated by fear.
A documentary about a dangerous feat can spend so long insisting on its importance that there is no pleasure left in watching it. Marsh avoids that trap by taking the preparations seriously without making every participant sound solemn. The humour matters: it gives the helpers something to do beyond admiring Petit, and makes their company worth keeping. For all his delight in the scheme, Marsh also leaves space for the demands it places on other people.
At 94 minutes, it gives this elaborate scheme time to develop without requiring a long evening. There is no need to be interested in wire-walking beforehand. Petit’s account makes a case for spending an unreasonable amount of effort on something with no practical purpose. If heights make you uncomfortable, we would still recommend it, though perhaps not on the largest screen available.
