Marsh, director of Wisconsin Death Trip, weaves stock footage (shot by the participants), current interviews and re-enactments to show how Philippe Petit and associates snuck to the top of both Twin Towers one night in ’74 and shot a line across their roofs for Petit to walk and dance upon. Pretty unbelievable stuff, kinda sad and inspiring. I flashed back to Maddin’s comments on lost buildings of his youth in My Winnipeg as much as I paid attention to the screen.
I wanted a lock-groove Michael Nyman score to propel the movie into a screaming intensity, but that never happened. Recognized a few other music pieces, which I suppose were “In The Hall Of The Mountain King”, “A Fifth of Beethoven” and Erik Satie.
David Edelstein: “It goes without saying — and happily, Man on Wire doesn’t say it — that all this took place in a more naive time, that the notion of foreigners with fake IDs slipping past guards into the Twin Towers has a different meaning now. So does the prospect of falling from the top.”