The story of the French acrobat Phillipe whose dream of walking on a rope between the World Trade Center Towers started when he saw a picture of the (then planned) Twin Towers in a magazine. The film has his comrades in the preparations narrate their tasks and little adventures, culminating in the 45 minutes of walking, lying, waving, saluting that made him the most famous rope walker he is.
A story of vanity, first and foremost, where the underlying (and maybe more interesting) story is not the one about how to sneak into the WTC construction site and get all this equipment in place before the police moves in. It is the story of how somebody can pick out whatever aberrant form of amusement, but heighten this to a level where you can actually wow the world with something as otherwise negligible as walking and jumping on a steel rope. And whatever it is you chose to build your fame upon, you can get all the side effects of fame: arrogance, alienation form friends and family, a certain form of craziness, and a level of self-glorification that is hard to stand for you environment. The film can concentrate on this, because there is little original material to draw on. So the talking heads are at the centre of attention, and their story of how the heist got planned, what the tasks were, and what happened afterwards make more than one of them apparently realise the loss it brought about for them. The funny little gang of before broke up immediately upon success, and this film looks a bit like a memorial to the good old time when planning was more important than doing.
Altogether a slightly overhyped film, but that I write mostly because the core subject matter I do not find too interesting. I was never a big friend of the circus…
thomas4cinema 