Director: James Marsh
Writer: Philippe Petit (book)
Cast: Philippe Petit, Paul McGill
Runtime: 94 mins.
2008
In preparation for this weekend's release of The Walk, a fictional dramatization of Philippe Petit's dangerous and illegal highwire performance between the two towers of the World Trade Center, I took a look at the 2008 documentary about this very subject. This marks the first time I've reviewed a documentary on Post-Credit Coda. I don't watch very many documentaries, and I tend to shy away from nonfiction in general. The tang of "truthfulness" that documentaries advertise has little appeal for me. I understand the draw of finding out about things that historically happened in the world, but the way I see it all stories are based in truth, whether they historically happened or not. Fiction only resonates with us because on some level it could have happened, so fiction can share the same types of truths about reality that nonfiction can.
That being said, nonfiction affords us an opportunity to share in a cultural legacy, and in my previous paragraph I vastly underplay the importance of memorializing human accomplishments. The tricky thing about documentaries, though, is that we need to adjust our critical and ethical standards. Rather than simply reviewing the quality of the narrative and craft, must we also be critical of the veracity and evenhandedness with which the film treats its material? On the other side of the spectrum, need we be more allowing for plot holes and imperfect arcs since that is often the way real life events play out?
Luckily, Man on Wire throws me a softball for my first nonfiction review; the film is structured like a heist movie. The narrative lens zips back and forth between interviews with Philippe + co., and dramatized reenactments featuring actors playing younger versions. The interviews are compelling, and the dramatizations are so convincing that your first impulse will be to wonder how they got all this old footage. I can see people getting through the entire movie without realizing they're watching actors instead of old videos.
