THE WALK
***
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Screenwriters: Robert Zemeckis and Christopher Browne based on the book To Reach The Clouds by Philippe Petit
Principal cast:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Ben Kingsley
Charlotte le Bon
Vlad Stokanic
Harvey Diamond
Mark Trafford
Country: USA
Classification: PG
Runtime: 123 mins.
Australian release date: 15 October 2015
The Walk is a vertiginous experience you can have from the safety of your cinema seat yet still feel that you’ve actually accomplished the dare-devil exploit portrayed. Robert Zemeckis has always been known as a SFX wizard and now he has successfully reached another level in 3D by taking us not as high as Everest but certainly up there in the clouds. Based on Philippe Petit’s book, To Reach The Clouds, this very watchable screen interpretation of one man’s endeavour to tightrope across the void between the World Trade Center towers makes for a thrilling 123 minutes. As no moving footage of Petit’s 1974 walk exists, this is as close as we’re ever going to get to see the real feat, and what a feat it was!
In 2008, James March directed an Oscar-winning documentary on Petit called Man On Wire. He used original photos and interviews with his subject and much of the storyline was based on the police report taken at the time. Zemeckis, on the other hand, builds up to Petit’s arrest after he’d spent almost an hour on the wire and had an audience of 100,000 onlookers on the ground. The first part of his film deals with Petit’s unhappy home life and his early years in Paris, all of which is treated in a fairly twee manner. Later, when the director hits his stride, we learn that the walk (Petit called it “le coup”) was planned like a military exercise. The idea originally came to Petit when he was waiting in a dentist’s surgery and saw a photo of the under-construction of the Twin Towers in a magazine. He had already attempted and successfully traversed the spires of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral and was hankering for a bigger challenge.
To further this aim, Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) goes in search of a mentor and finds Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), a veteran aerialist working in a circus. He needed to learn more about the challenges presented by high-wire walking, and erecting the wire safely, which he viewed as an extension of his previous talents as a slack-line walker, juggler and unicyclist in the streets of Paris. He also meets, and falls for, a pretty young busker called Annie (Charlotte Le Bon). Together they set off for New York City where Petit accumulates a group known as his ‘accomplices,’ including a fast-talking electronic salesman, an amateur photographer, a moustachioed insurance worker and a couple of ‘stoners,’ and on 6 August 1974, they set off to commit the ‘artistic crime of the century.’
The rest, as they say, is history. The use of 3D heightens the experience and overshadows the rather irritating scenes at the start of the film when Petit narrates his tale of derring-do while perched on the top of the Statue of Liberty. Narration of this kind is always risky - after all, film is a visual medium and a well-illustrated story shouldn’t need to be ‘told’ - and it seems to be an unnecessary device here. Never the less, Gordon-Levitt is pretty convincing in his portrayal of Petit (although his French accent is somewhat clichéd) and he really did learn the art of tight-rope walking to shoot the high-wire scenes. And what powerful scenes they are: after the press preview I attended, everyone admitted to having sweaty palms and suffering vertigo. An experience not for the faint-hearted but worth it for the adrenalin rush!
Petit was a driven guy and, at times, not a terribly likeable one, and you do ask yourself, “Was the man mad?” but somehow it all seems worthwhile when he hovers hundreds of metres above the streets of New York - without a safety net! Gordon-Levitt successfully captures his feeling of euphoria as he walks back-and-forth across the wire. It’s poignant, too, when the final shot pays homage to the great buildings themselves, buildings that were to be decimated 27 years later by real madmen.
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Screenwriters: Robert Zemeckis and Christopher Browne based on the book To Reach The Clouds by Philippe Petit
Principal cast:
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Ben Kingsley
Charlotte le Bon
Vlad Stokanic
Harvey Diamond
Mark Trafford
Country: USA
Classification: PG
Runtime: 123 mins.
Australian release date: 15 October 2015
The Walk is a vertiginous experience you can have from the safety of your cinema seat yet still feel that you’ve actually accomplished the dare-devil exploit portrayed. Robert Zemeckis has always been known as a SFX wizard and now he has successfully reached another level in 3D by taking us not as high as Everest but certainly up there in the clouds. Based on Philippe Petit’s book, To Reach The Clouds, this very watchable screen interpretation of one man’s endeavour to tightrope across the void between the World Trade Center towers makes for a thrilling 123 minutes. As no moving footage of Petit’s 1974 walk exists, this is as close as we’re ever going to get to see the real feat, and what a feat it was!
In 2008, James March directed an Oscar-winning documentary on Petit called Man On Wire. He used original photos and interviews with his subject and much of the storyline was based on the police report taken at the time. Zemeckis, on the other hand, builds up to Petit’s arrest after he’d spent almost an hour on the wire and had an audience of 100,000 onlookers on the ground. The first part of his film deals with Petit’s unhappy home life and his early years in Paris, all of which is treated in a fairly twee manner. Later, when the director hits his stride, we learn that the walk (Petit called it “le coup”) was planned like a military exercise. The idea originally came to Petit when he was waiting in a dentist’s surgery and saw a photo of the under-construction of the Twin Towers in a magazine. He had already attempted and successfully traversed the spires of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral and was hankering for a bigger challenge.
To further this aim, Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) goes in search of a mentor and finds Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), a veteran aerialist working in a circus. He needed to learn more about the challenges presented by high-wire walking, and erecting the wire safely, which he viewed as an extension of his previous talents as a slack-line walker, juggler and unicyclist in the streets of Paris. He also meets, and falls for, a pretty young busker called Annie (Charlotte Le Bon). Together they set off for New York City where Petit accumulates a group known as his ‘accomplices,’ including a fast-talking electronic salesman, an amateur photographer, a moustachioed insurance worker and a couple of ‘stoners,’ and on 6 August 1974, they set off to commit the ‘artistic crime of the century.’
The rest, as they say, is history. The use of 3D heightens the experience and overshadows the rather irritating scenes at the start of the film when Petit narrates his tale of derring-do while perched on the top of the Statue of Liberty. Narration of this kind is always risky - after all, film is a visual medium and a well-illustrated story shouldn’t need to be ‘told’ - and it seems to be an unnecessary device here. Never the less, Gordon-Levitt is pretty convincing in his portrayal of Petit (although his French accent is somewhat clichéd) and he really did learn the art of tight-rope walking to shoot the high-wire scenes. And what powerful scenes they are: after the press preview I attended, everyone admitted to having sweaty palms and suffering vertigo. An experience not for the faint-hearted but worth it for the adrenalin rush!
Petit was a driven guy and, at times, not a terribly likeable one, and you do ask yourself, “Was the man mad?” but somehow it all seems worthwhile when he hovers hundreds of metres above the streets of New York - without a safety net! Gordon-Levitt successfully captures his feeling of euphoria as he walks back-and-forth across the wire. It’s poignant, too, when the final shot pays homage to the great buildings themselves, buildings that were to be decimated 27 years later by real madmen.