Petit's stunt is extended into a feature-length documentary. There's no actual footage of him walking (and kneeling, and lying on his back) on the wire between the twin towers, only a few photographs. There is some Super-8 quality footage made by Petit's conspirators back in France, where they had trained, and where Petit earlier earned notoriety for a high wire walk across Notre Dame cathedral. He had another such stunt in Australia.
Mostly though, it is a film with talking heads, including Petit, Heckel, Jean-Louis Blondeau, and Petit's loyal girlfriend Annie Allix, whom he dumped in the aftermath of his sudden (but short-lived) Twin Towers fame.
Man on Wire tries to build suspense with the tale of the elaborate sting on the Trade Towers. Petit and his gang dressed up as either workmen or businessmen, complete with fake but convincing badges. They made their way to the two roofs, and somehow managed to avoid guards until they were able to pull off the stunt. They beat the odds to accomplish it, but then again, if they had been ignobly arrested or gave up, the movie would never have been made.
How others will see it. The September 11 terrorist act took down the Twin Towers at a cost of thousands of lives. Some years later, a nostalgia for lost NYC Trade Center made 2008 the right time for the movie.
The story is audacious, yet innocent. Petit considered himself an artist, and at a time when the United States was consumed by the Watergate scandal, he briefly became a cause cèlébre, then was forgotten.
The charm of the story explains the appeal of the documentary. It is also competently made, but its success is nonetheless surprising. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary, and even more remarkable, it won Outstanding British Film at BAFTA. Remember, it is a film about Frenchmen in New York City.
It is highly popular at imdb.com, where it has surpassed 18K user votes with a very high average rating of 7.9. One wonders what the user rating would have been if Petit had fallen to his death from the makeshift high wire. But if he had, then the film wouldn't have been made.
How I felt about it. The 1974 Petit (he apparently did nothing noteworthy afterward, but at least avoided serious trouble) is a skilled performance artist whose charisma compels others to suspend their own lives to follow him. He is a prophet with a vision, but instead of saving souls (is such a thing even possible?) he seeks a Great Moment, a day when he will be the lead story on the 5 PM news.
Doubtlessly, reporters were glad to have a story apart from Watergate. Undoubtedly, many were amused by the event. Others may have been inspired. I vaguely remember some publicity seeker with equipment climbing the outside of a New York skyscraper.
Still, it's not an accomplishment up there with Jonas Salk and his oral vaccine for polio. Ultimately, it was just a stunt. And when it was over, Petit broke off with his friends, and everyone concerned rebuilt ordinary lives. Petit was an eccentric whose intensity of pursuit ensnared others. It was work, it was fun, and best of all, it defied authority in an ultimately harmless way.
The story might make a great drama. But it doesn't make a great documentary, primarily because no cameras were there on the day the stunt occurred. The film relies on talking head memories to fill the gap that ideally should have archive footage. Since no such footage exists, the movie should have been a chronological re-enactment with actors. But without the story of how Petit scored with a groupie as soon as he was released from custody.