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Much has been written about this great film, but here's my two cents:
My first experience with the sublime, crazed genius of Philippe Petit came four years ago when I was working at an extremely upscale children's bookstore in Beverly Hills called Storyopolis. Oprah had endorsed the place because they sold gift baskets filled with books. As a peace offering she had given one to David Lettermen when he had his first child. As you would expect from an Oprah endorsed Beverly Hills locale it was the worse job of my life. Worse even than working as a dishwasher in the early 90s making literally minimum wage ($4.65 an hour). At Storyopolis I was treated with a Brechtian disregard by obscenely wealthy and imperious people that were also stunningly stingy as they cruised from one boutique to the next demanding a refund for the $2.50 gift wrap fee they "weren't aware of." I'm recounting all this because professionally it was a deeply bitter time in my life and reading The Man Who Walked Between The Towers, a lovely, serene children's book about Petit's famed tightrope walk between the towers in 1974, literally brightened my entire week. That's the incandescence of Petit's "artistic crime of the century" it gives you shivers even recounting it in watercolors.
James Marsh has made one of those rare documentaries that's meticulous and free-wheeling, unburdened by the "documentary as torch of truth" pretension and instead takes the reign of this crazy actual event and crafts a quick-paced, funny thriller.
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