Man on Wire Review

James Marsh made the correct decision early and stuck to it: this is not a documentary about a stunt, it is a caper, cut and scored like one, and the tower walk is the safe cracking at the end. The reconstructions are shot grainy and dark, the accomplices are introduced like a crew being assembled, and the plan has all the proper beats. Fake identity cards. A bow and arrow to shoot a fishing line across the gap between the roofs. A night spent lying under a tarpaulin on a steel beam while a guard stands close enough to touch.

Petit himself is the reason it works. Deep into his fifties he is still a performer, telling the story with his whole body, coming up out of the chair, and the film lets him. The counterweight is Jean Louis Blondeau and Annie Allix, who were there and who describe, without much prompting, what it cost to be close to a man that single minded. Petit's account of the walk itself is the finest passage: eight crossings, a knee bent on the cable, lying down on his back with a bird overhead, and a policeman at either end waiting for him to come in.

The film never says the date in September 2001 and never shows what happened to the buildings. Not mentioning it is the whole eulogy, and the restraint is why the picture is more moving than any of the treatments that do mention it. It took the Grand Jury and Audience prizes at Sundance, a BAFTA and the documentary Oscar, and its unbroken critical record is one of the few that is deserved.