MAN ON WIRE (2008 - Cert 12)

Michael Moore has proved to be a bit of a game changer. Say what you want about him, but he has had a massive amount to do with making documentary in the cinema more popular. Since he grabbed the Oscar for Bowling for Columbine the genre has been thrust into the mainstream. His films have done very well, but since he picked up the gong that particular category at the Oscars has started to get a bit more exposure. This only increased with March of the Penguins with Morgan Freeman's voice on board and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth in 2005 and 2006. Then in 2008 came Man On Wire, James Marsh's film about Philippe Petit's amazing stunt of walking a tightrope between the twin towers of The World Trade Centre.



I must admit that for a while I've felt as though I should watch it, as I had heard some good things, but I kept putting it off because I just wasn't sure how you could make a whole documentary out of that one event. How foolish I was, I could not have been more wrong. There is plenty there to enjoy, it's not just a recreation of a mad Frenchman walking on a rope high in the sky. Although that particular element does feature.

The main thrust of the film is Petit himself. From just one minute of seeing him on screen it's clear that this film just could not be made without his input. He is eccentric, passionate, creative, slightly mental, obsessive, but listening to him talk about his childhood and the motives for doing what he did is so engrossing. He may be annoying to some, but if you can get past that, he's a wonderful character whose spirit just can't be dampened. He has that side to him that a lot of notable artists or creatives have, on the edge of madness but totally charming with it. Much of the success of the film rests on just how watchable he is and how his personality instantly hooks you in.

The structure of the film works superbly as well. It would not be enough to have a bloke explaining how much he likes walking tightropes and then see him walking it. It shows footage and short explanations and recreations of two other stunts he did, walking between two towers above Notre Dame and again on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia. In all honesty, they both impressed me enough on their own for me to be a little bit amazed by the whole thing, and I thought to myself that walking high up is walking high up, once you do it 20 stories up somewhere, not much changes from doing it 200 stories up, apart from maybe it being a bit windier. However, it wasn't the fact that he walked between the two World Trade Centre towers that is so incredible, it's how he, and some fellow conspirators, got up there.

Marsh presents it in a heist-like manner, sort of a Crime Watch reconstruction of Ocean's Eleven, including nick names for all the people involved. It's done with aplomb and bit of flair, the narration and interviews with these bonkers people really helping to motor the story along. It almost seems like it can't be real, but then you remember this is a documentary and it all really happened. It's one of those stories that just seems too fantastical to have actually really took place.

And then it happens, and you see pictures and footage of him up there. It's just remarkable and worth the hour or so before it. I would have gladly watched 3 hours of the build up just to get to see him doing his thing. It has quite an uplifting closure as well, as the story winds up nicely with a real feel-good vibe. It's so worth a watch, I can't recommend it enough, a moving image documentation of an amazing chapter in the history of these two buildings that tragically don't exist anymore.