In February 2009, the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature went to director James Marsh for his spellbinding film Man on Wire. The film tells the story of Philippe Petit, a French tightrope walker, magician and unicyclist who sets out to perform an illegal high-wire walk between New York’s Twin Towers soon after their construction in 1974. 

Marsh structures Petit’s adventure as a heist film, quite appropriately since the Frenchman and his friends undertake an elaborate scheme to bypass World Trade Center security in order to plan the stunt. As the Los Angeles Times declares, Man on Wire will make you “shake your head in amazement.” Indeed, Petit’s fearlessness and his vow to “live my life on the tightrope” will have you riveted as you watch this ultimate daredevil carefully walk above the clouds of New York City on that fateful day.

Marsh’s film begins with Petit’s childhood, which naturally was filled with mischief and adventure. One day, as a teenager in 1968, Petit was in his dentist’s office reading a magazine when he came across an article about the building plans for the World Trade Center in New York. He quickly became obsessed, at one point coming to New York and convincing a photographer to take him in a helicopter to get aerial photos of the construction site. 

Never forgetting his ultimate goal to tightrope walk between the Twin Towers, Petit practiced by “walking” the Notre Dame Cathedral, Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia. All these stunts were illegal and attracted the attention of both amazed bystanders and furious government officials. Nevertheless, Petit carried on and cleverly avoided authorities. He also, of course, avoided death – Petit never used nets or support ropes – simply a balancing stick he carried horizontally. Still, factors like wind and unexpected precipitation sometimes interfered with what he described as a pure form of art.

Before long, Petit had made a scale model of the Twin Towers and fake ID cards for him and his friends, who posed as contractors hired to install an electric fence on the roof. After many failed engineering strategies, the team decided to get the rope across the tower roofs by attaching one end to an arrow and shooting it across with a bow.

At 7:15 A.M. on August 7, 1974, Petit walked off the swaying South Tower roof and onto a thin steel cable. Pedestrians looked a quarter mile up to see a man (or as many attested, a lunatic) crossing back and forth eight times between the towers for 45 minutes. Petit, a true showman, gave the clouds a knee salute and at one point lay down on the wire and “spoke” with a gull circling above his head. When the Port Authority Police Department arrived on the roof, expecting perhaps to find a depressed madman, they found a laughing Petit who literally bounced up and down on the wire. Petit was handcuffed and questioned as to why he did it. To this, he could only reply, “When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk.”

Marsh’s film is an artistic masterpiece in every sense. Petit truly feels that his tightrope walks are art forms; they are expressions of himself that can only be exhibited and felt with the utmost emotional and spiritual connections. Visually, the film is breathtaking with shots of Petit’s walks around the world. Eccentric and tirelessly inspired, Petit is the perfect protagonist who constantly reminds his audience that they must follow their dreams, regardless of the consequences.

In addition to an Oscar, Man on Wire is the winner of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize and the World Cinema Audience Award. Visit www.manonwire.com/ for more information, and check out a replay of Petit’s Academy Award acceptance speech on YouTube. The speech was complete with a coin trick and Petit balancing the upside-down Oscar on his chin.