Part caper movie, part real-life superhero saga and entirely engrossing, James Marsh's documentary recounts in Rififi-like detail how a Parisian street performer and wire walker named Philippe Petit dodged cops, fought the elements and defied seemingly impossible logistics to pull off a feat of death-defying frivolity: an illegal, hastily rigged tightrope walk on August 7, 1974, across the 1,350-foot plunge between the World Trade Center's twin towers. Still lithe and trim, with a mime's precision of gesture, the now middle-aged Petit animates the movie, impishly retelling the six years of struggle and complications en route to the big walk. The tale makes for gripping cinema: The visual medium conveys not only the terror and wonder of Petit's stunt but also its airy surrealism — a defiance of gravity made even more elating by its life-or-death consequences. Man on Wire is also haunted by the story it doesn't tell: Although the movie relies on present-day interviews with its subjects, the date September 11 is never uttered. That void turns Marsh's film into a ghostly meditation on the transience of human accomplishment. All monuments someday end up tombstones. But for the duration of this exhilarating documentary, the towers stand.
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