James Marsh’s documentary Man on a Wire recounts the incredible story of Philippe Petit’s 1974 walk between the World Trade Center’s twin towers on a tightrope. Marsh employs black and white re-enactments and interviews with all the major accomplices, including Petit himself, to recount the compelling sequence of events. This transformational act, of course, has added resonance since the towers no longer exist, but this fact is not mentioned at all during the film; its absence is powerful enough. The story instead focuses on one man’s journey.
Petit was possessed by his imagination at an early age and wanted to conquer seemingly Olympian heights just for the sake of doing it. He had no message or motive besides history. However, Petit is portrayed in the documentary as a natural performer, even in his 50’s, and on that fateful morning he was definitely conscious of the crowd below and the cops above. Even if it was not his primary ambition, he was an entertainer that memorable day.
Richard Dyer defines entertainment as “a type of performance produced for profit, performed before a generalized audience (‘the public’), by a trained, paid group who do nothing else but produce performances which have the sole (conscious) aim of providing pleasure.” Petit was divorced from the profit motivation that Dyer deems necessary. Petit’s actions were also dramatically opposed to the social mores which are supposed to be reinforced through entertainment. He, in fact, had to break the law to attain artistic freedom and was not remotely part of the capitalist patriarchy which entertainment usually reinforces according to Dyer. Commercialization only happened after the fact as interviews, books, residencies, and this movie obviously attest to. Nonetheless, Petit and the movie itself share other similarities with Dyer’s more expansive definition of entertainment. Man on a Wire encompasses all but one of his vital categories which include energy, abundance, intensity, transparency, and community.
Energy was encapsulated in the intense six year planning phase whether through Petit’s interminable training sessions or the heated arguments over logistics and timing. Petit lacked any abundance before his great feat unless you count his preternatural skill, but afterwards he did partake in the sins of the flesh and the notoriety his tightrope walk afforded him. The intensity was the substance of the dare itself; Petit was risking his life for a childhood dream he refused to let go no matter what the consequences. He remarks in the film that his death would be glorious if it happened in the attempt. The transparency was clearly delineated between Annie and Petit. They loved each other with a willful innocence which seemed like forever while it lasted. She was his muse and, he her hero. After the walk across the abyss they could never return to the past. Innocence could not endure under the spotlight. And finally community was the crowds below and the millions subsequent who lavished praise on this modern marvel. His life has never been the same since, nor has his relationships with the people who helped him. That community of friends, hangers-on, and petit-anarchists that fostered the accomplishment no longer exists, except in the artificial editing of the film.
Another aspect of Dyer’s thesis is the iconic relationship between signifier and signified. In Man on a Wire the representational aspects include the stark re-enactment footage, the fractured interviews, and the extensive video and photo documentation. The non-representational lies in the frantic montage sequences towards the beginning and end of the film, the soaring musical score, and the incidental venue where the film is screened. Both convey confusion, fear, exhilaration, and ultimately triumph and alienation in an impressive emotional arc which is the hallmark of good entertainment. Dyer affirms that “entertainment offers the image of ‘something better’ to escape into, or something we want deeply that our day-to-day lives don’t provide.” We may not reach theses hallowed utopian heights, which Dyer unearths in other celluloid fare, especially musicals, but for a moment Petit’s actions become symbolic for a reckless spirit and hope which is now lost to us after 9/11.
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