note: this post is about the currently-released documentary man on wire. since said film recounts an event that happened over 30 years ago, nothing i have written here could be realistically called a 'spoiler.' however, if you genuinely plan on seeing the movie, this post might compromise your ability to see it with fresh eyes. fair warning.
You never understood, why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It's miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you... then you got to see something really special... you really don't know?... it was... it was the look on their faces.
-robert angier, in the prestige
in typical fashion, ive been chewing a lot of ears off about the prestige, a movie i think is woefully underappreciated. (btw, how come i never heard any jokes about kid dynamite chewing real deal's ear off? like, not one? seriously? and yes, im over a decade late with that.)
anyway, the prestige is about two rival magicians in fin de siècle london. at one pt the pair debate the value of their craft, and angier gives alfred borden the quote above. but forget about the prestige for a moment; that quote is a perfect way to sum up the life of philippe petit, subject of man on wire.
this is the frenchman who, in 1974, at the age of 24, walked a wire strung between the roofs of the two world trade center towers - for around 45 minutes(!); going back and forth roughly eight times(!); and even, at times, lying down(!); hangin out just like a street sign - albeit at an altitude where the streets have no name. (couldnt resist.)
of course, that's the climax of the movie. the hour or more leading up to 'the coup' is spent documenting petit's training and planning, and the travails of the multi-person team that surreptitiously (illegally) snuck up to the tops of the towers to set up the wire (it took a lot of work and espionage).
the whole time, as bro-ham is doing all this preparation, i kept thinking, 'why the hell does he feel the need to do this? is he just a mindless adrenaline junkie (even though in interviews, he came off as charming and thoughtful)? and why are his friends and gf letting him do this?'
so even though i was sitting there fixedly watching and taking in all the work that went into one of the most death-defying stunts of all time, a thought wouldnt leave the back of my dome: wrap it up however you want, this guy's just a careless, suicidal daredevil. we all know people like that; they compromise life under a patina of cheating death. petit seemed to be their archetype, is all.
man on wire, was i wrong.
b.c the instant he stepped onto that wire, the second he was no longer anchored to either tower, but rather, to a seemingly invisible wire strung btwn them, my eyes started watering. i got it.
from wikipedia:
Port Authority Police Department Sgt. Charles Daniels, who was dispatched to the roof to bring Petit down, later reported his experience:
I observed the tightrope 'dancer'—because you couldn't call him a 'walker' - approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire....And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle....He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again....Unbelievable really....[E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it.
that was the thing. i realized that intentionally or not, petit did this for us just as much as he did it for himself. as angier said, petit '[made] us wonder,' we 'got to see something really special.'
many people like to say that in life, 'it's the little things.' well, i agree. but i think we live on the little things - a nice conversation, a tasty meal, a good laugh, a good saturday - but we live for the big things.
it is inherent in us to wonder. we alone have the capacity to do that - to look at the universe into which weve been born, and know theres so much of it we cant understand at all, let alone grasp. but it's more than just a capacity. it's an intuitive yearning to reconnect with the ether from which we were sprung.
if only for a fleeting moment, petit pierced that ether. droplets of magic bubbled up from it, and fell down, and the people watching imbibed them, and were never the same. i think watching the movie, i only got facsimiles of those droplets, but i got that taste on my tongue nonetheless.
other things that have fed my spirit like that: seeing the great pyramid of giza; god putting on a jimi hendrix costume and playing a set at woodstock; reggie miller's 8 pts in 8.9 seconds against the knicks; great sex; laird hamilton domesticating a wave the size of a mountain; being in the middle of the atlantic on a cruise with my moms, seeing the stars on a 180 degree plane, from horizon to horizon; the image of that kid standing in front of the tank in tiananmen square; the last paragraph of one hundred years of solitude; the bodies exhibit at the seaport; the footage of neil armstrong stepping onto the moon.
in manhattan, woody allen gives a soliloquy on 'what makes life worth living,' and it's a very elegant list. but theyre things you can potentially get everyday. again, things we live on; in my opinion, not the things we live for. those things only come around once in a while, but they do come. petit gave the world one of those things.
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