Daredevil documentary sidesteps symbolism

When you think of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, you think of tragedy. You think of the most heinous terrorist attack on American soil, and a nation at its lowest ebb.

I also think of a night in the mid-1970s, the only time I was in the World Trade Center. It was the night when CBS had planned a party and tribute to comedian Carol Burnett. The setting was Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the 110-story North Tower.

The night was a disaster from beginning to end. Of the anticipated stars, no one showed up. That left only Burnett and the press, putting her into a foul mood. “I’m here to pay tribute to myself,” she said.

Upon my arrival, an elevator sped me to the 86th floor, where passengers had to change elevators to get to the 110th. It was an ominous journey – even years before the fatal 9/11 date. Having seen “The Towering Inferno” (1974), I imagined that if there were a fire, it would be impossible to get down. Plus, there is no way firefighters could get to you at that height.

Once at the top, I felt the place swaying as if you were on a ship. Never have I been in a building that swayed so much, not even in an earthquake in Los Angeles. You could almost get seasick. Hearing my comments, the know-it-alls in the party explained grandly that “it’s supposed to sway. It wouldn’t be safe if it didn’t.”

I never went back, and, of course, I will never go back. The eerie feeling was dismissed until Sept. 11, 2001.

Now we think of it again upon the arrival of a movie called “Man on Wire,” a restaging of a French wire-walker’s walk from one tower to the other on Aug. 7, 1974. For me, the buildings and their history upstage both the man and the wire, and I think many viewers will feel the same.

It is a documentary that is yet another Sundance Film Festival winner.

Masquerading, none too well, as a heist movie, the film, directed by James Marsh, chronicles the 6½ years of planning in France and eight months of execution in America that ended when Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between the twin towers, then the world’s tallest buildings.

Petit is a scrappy, idealistic little man who talks feverishly about his dream, for which he prepared by walking on a similar wire between the two bell towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the towers of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia.

The tiffs and quarrels among members of the “gang,” a group of volunteers with no apparent motive other than glory, play much like a regular heist movie, although we don’t care about them because we don’t get to know them. Annie, the girlfriend who gives up her own life to push the grand walk, is the closest thing to a fully developed supporting character.

The group, remarkably, carts more than a ton of equipment up a freight elevator and, through use of bow and arrow, transports small bits of a cable across one at a time. There are some almost-suspenseful moments when the security guards close in on them. 

We are torn between whether to pull for the daredevils or the security guards. One gets the idea that this isn’t how we’re supposed to feel.

These scenes obviously are restaged because they couldn’t have been shot in real time. The restaging at least is more honest than the phony dialogues in the current “documentary” called “American Teen.”

There are long moments, though, when one is prompted to ask “So what?” Efforts to make this wire-walking escapade an act of triumphant rebellion don’t come off.

That leaves the World Trade Center itself as the star. More interesting than the wire walker are archive scenes of the construction and a heart-stopping moment when the towers are dedicated, on opening day, to “harmony in the world.” It didn’t work out that way, did it?

The World Trade Center towers are not fodder to be used as the setting for a heist. History has changed their legacy entirely and reduced, not enhanced, any interest in a stunt man who traversed their heights.

In the end, Petit was charged only with disturbing the peace. “Man on Wire” is disturbing, all right, but almost entirely because of its setting, not its substance.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com