Photo Courtesy Sundance Film Festival

Nursing a toothache, Philippe Petit sat in a dentist's office and while waiting for his appointment, read a magazine. It happened right at that innocent moment that he came across his life's object of desire. In New York, a set of towers were right then being constructed, the tallest buildings the world would yet know. Tearing the page from its binding, Petit escaped the office and scurried home. With the sketch of the World Trade Center in his pocket, daring Petit would spend the next several years preparing for his perilous tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. Splendidly made by James Marsh, Man On Wire explores the intersection of art and adventure in a lyrical vision mixed with archival footage, poetic talking head interviews and artful dramatizations. Based on Petit's book To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers, the film is an inspiration with a bittersweet kick, reminding its audience that when we attain what we reach, we also lose that dream's pursuit.

Marsh opens as Petit and crew leave their New York apartment in a van filled with equipment and head toward the WTC. Hearts beat fast, all of the crew sure they'll be caught and arrested on charges of trespass. As the doc bounces back and forth between the heist scenario itself and background on Petit's development as a tightrope walker, Marsh draws a world of infinite imagination, Petit comrades Annie, Jean Francois and Jean Louis all playing into the impossible dream. Warm 1970s footage of the crew practicing for the walk is both idyllic and nostalgic, and yet the perfection of these moments is continually overturned by the black-and-white shot, dangerous situation of the walk's set-up reality. Security guards, hour long delays and blunders with the rigging block much success, and it's only by sheer persistence that Petit and crew manage to beat the rising sun.

The brilliance of Marsh's construction primarily lies in the tension he's able to develop despite the fact that the audience knows that Petit is alive and well. Obviously, he makes his journey across the Twin Tower tightrope safely, and yet as editor Jinx Godfrey cuts moments together, there's an overwhelming fear that Petit nonetheless will fall the 1,350 feet to his death. It's a trick of the mind so powerful that only a master hand come guide it.

On August 7, 1974, after having walked across his tightrope above the streets of New York for more than 30 minutes, Petit was taken into custody--his crime described as 'Man on Wire.' Sentenced to performing shows for children, Petit's reprimand for what's been called "the artistic crime of the century" was light. It was all his friends instead who suffered in the wake of the dream accomplished, and in closing moments of the doc, their stories aired, it's heartbreaking to see how dreams, seeming so sweet, can be deceptive. A beautiful film, Man On Wire is one of those triumphs that shows how all of life can be encapsulated in one moment, how all of a life can lead to the everywhere and nowhere on an instant.

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