Man On Wire Film Flies Highest In Hollywood

Man On Wire Film Flies Highest In Hollywood

Jon Gripton in Hollywood

It was the bookmakers' favourite for the best documentary Oscar, and some critics even labelled Man on Wire the best film of all at this year's Academy Awards.

When I told British director James Marsh before the ceremony that the results had apparently been leaked, he shreaked "Oh God" and urged me not to tell him any more.

"We're the favourite to win so I'm assuming we won't win," he said.

"But it doesn't really matter whether we win or not. This is the end of a great journey. This is the big one. And it's the one chance in my life to win an Oscar, and be part of the circus, as it were," he said.

Only a short while later, the Academy confirmed it as its best documentary.

The film tells the story of tightrope walker Philippe Petit's incredible 1974 stunt when he strung a wire between the two twin towers of New York's World Trade Centre and then crossed between the buildings eight times in 45 minutes, taunting police as he did so.

Petit, a charming, charismatic Frenchman took six years to plan the venture as he watched the construction of the landmark buildings.

Clearly a man who likes to take his time, Petit took another year of his life to decide to make the film with Marsh.

Petit's own book of the adventure - To Reach The Clouds - dwells on the mechanics, the physics and the intricacies of his incredible feat, while Marsh's Man On Wire is presented like a classic heist-movie.

"This was the nearest thing to a miracle that you can have without divine intervention," Marsh tells me.

 

Oscar winner James Marsh (left) with Man on Wire team


"It is a fantastic drama. A present tense real-time unfolding adventure. I've used the word heist - it's like watching a bank robbery. The preparation, the disguises, the planning...

"On one level, it's a man walking around on a tightrope, but it isn't that. It's a story about the limits of what we're capable of as human beings."

Clearly the film has added poignancy from the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Marsh was living in the city at the time, and watched the collapse of the WTC 7 building as he filmed the devastation.

"Those towers were living, breathing beautiful things," he says.

"Many people were hurt by that day, directly and indirectly. And it is undoubtedly a subtext to the film. But it would have been wrong and clumsy to have mentioned it. We know many things now that we did not know in 1974."

Petit, who lives in New York but who made to trip to Los Angeles to accept the Oscar, also acknowledges the emotion of the Twin Towers.

"To me they are still there. They are there. Those towers to me they were alive. They were almost human," he said.

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