Philippe Petit set himself a challenge, he dreamed a crazy dream. This French tightrope walker’s goal was to walk 400 metres across a wire set up between the twin towers of the now vanished World Trade Centre in New York. The acclaimed documentary “Man on Wire’ is based on this true story, which took place in 1974, the last film to be screened by the Cine Club of Alcalá de Henares this season. The best international auteur and independent cinema will return to the screens of Alcalá after the summer on the 16th of September.
British filmmaker James Marsh was responsible for retrieving this true story, which has captivated the specialist critics. ‘Man on wire’ is one of the documentaries awarded the most prizes in recent years. It won the Oscar in its category at the last ceremony of the Hollywood Academy; it won best British film at the 2008 Baftas and received the highest award of the New York Critics Circle. It was premiered in Spain on the 17th of April 2008. A few months later, the Cine Club is reliving the sensations experienced by Petit in a moving feat defined by many as the “artistic crime of the century”.
After walking across and back along the wire for hour, Petit was arrested and presented to a judge. The documentary covers all the preparatory work of the Frenchman and his team, a project that was seven years in the making, seven years of longing and ambition culminating in the crossing between the Twin Towers. But Petit had to first overcome other major obstacles such as evading the security staff of the World Trade Center, smuggling in the steel cable required for the job, and installing, anchoring and tensing it before it could be walked on.
Michael Nyman provides the score to Philippe Petit’s unusual odyssey in a documentary structured like a ‘thriller’, with eyewitness accounts from the main people involved. The director invests it all in a poetic and disturbing aura, which draws the viewer into the action as far as is possible. A documentary that exploits a bunch of themes of great interest such as the desire to overcome, the mix between idealism and imprudence, and the moral and emotional vacuum left by the absence of the Twin Towers, hovering in the background throughout the film.
‘Man on wire’ will be screened on Wednesday the 3rd and Thursday the 4th of June in the Teatro Salón Cervantes of Alcalá de Henares. There will be two sessions on both days at 18:30 and 21:00.
