I’m willing to consider Petit a kind of Christian fakir-he’s artist in residence at St. John the Divine’s Cathedral in New York City-and his apparent immunity to fear could be an example to the spiritual everywhere. There’s nothing unreasonable about avoiding heights; falling from them has a tendency to maim and/or kill.
Advertisement
But, the actor insists, his wire-walking days won’t traverse into a party trick (“Not unless I want to carry a 400lb steel cable around with me!”).
The Walk not only transports viewers to a poetic 1970s New York for the unauthorised stunt, it gives an insight into who Petit was and the events that led to his life-endangering ambition, his early life growing up in Nemours, Seine-et-Marne, and his surrogate father.
The Walk is many things-a docudrama, a caper film, an action-adventure spectacular-but one thing it isn’t is redundant. The way he alienates his girlfriend and other supporters may cause you to root for the accomplishment more than the man. Had he failed, Petit would be remembered as reckless and arrogant, which he was – it’s just that his success at his task allows us to look back at him as being justifiably so. The title of Marsh’s documentary came from the police report-if one ever admired the seen-it-all laconicness of the NYPD, it was in hearing the way they summed up the trouble: “Man on wire”.
Determined to learn from the Rudy himself, Philippe approaches him.
As with Matt Damon in The Martian, much of that accomplishment can be chalked up to his boundless optimism and can-do attitude. “And even now, thinking about the movie”. Whither the moments of existential despair?
For the first time, there’s also moving images of the walk itself – giving a unique perspective from both the observer and Petit’s point of view. We always believe that he can do it, but never that it’s impossible. The setup is fleet of foot but lacks the spark of our monomaniacal protagonist.
Part of this required working with language and dialect coaches, to master his French lines and pull off a Parisian twang. You can think, “Oh my God, they’re rolling film; I can’t mess this up”, but you have to be able to set all of those thoughts aside and focus. Though a hokey technique, it comes to makes sense. This ultimate high-wire act, performed 110 stories up, was a free, illegal show for the morning crowds.
The Walk movie effects are causing many moviegoers to literally throw up.
It was the accidental discovery more than a decade ago of an illustrated children’s book called The Man Who Walked Between the Towers that stirred Zemeckis’ creative juices for his latest technical feat, The Walk. But first, he rewinds to how Petit got started as a multitalented street performer, disappointing his middle-class parents and making his way from riding a unicycle and juggling to evincing preternatural balance and grace as an aerialist.
Advertisement
During one of his direct addresses, Petit mentions that he was eventually given a pass to visit the World Trade Center’s observation deck whenever he wanted.
