Walking the wire ‘scary’ for Joseph Gordon-Levitt

In fact, as it’s demonstrated in the film, Petit assembled a small crew for his “artistic coup” to walk the wire between World Trade Center towers, which was pulled off like a heist underneath the noses of New York City authorities, city personnel and construction workers. But could anyone be a tightrope walker?

Twelve people have walked on the moon, but only one man has ever, or will ever, walk in the huge void between the World Trade Center towers.

It is a testament to the director’s skill that those familiar with the actual 1974 walk, would still find themselves at the edge of their seats once Levitt takes his first steps on the wire. He twirled, pirouetted and knelt on the wire, performing a kind of aerial ballet that only came to an end 45 minutes later when he finally leapt into the arms of the waiting, sweating NYPD.

“What you’re doing – I may not understand it but it’s something handsome”, Rudy confesses tenderly.

“The wire serves as a great metaphor for life”, says Gordon-Levitt, attempting to pin down the story’s enduring appeal. Rather, the reason I thought of Mad Max while watching The Walk is that the former film presented its evocative images and then encouraged me to use my imagination, while the latter papered over its visual poetry with unrelenting, unnecessary voice-over.

In and of itself, “The Walk” satisfies both as an absorbing yarn of authority-flouting adventure and an example of stomach-flipping you-are-there-ness.

The remarkable thing about this movie is how Zemeckis managed to bring an incredible amount of tension based on a fairly well documented event. How would Petit describe himself? “The most important thing was to tell the story that Philippe was telling by walking on this wire: you can create the impossible”.

“All artists are anarchists, in a few way”, says Petit’s photographer friend, Jean-Louis (Clément Sibony), and, indeed, for a major motion picture, this one boasts an unusually artful sheen. (Petit’s punishment: perform a free show in Central Park for children.) It’s not just the Twin Towers’ physical absence that makes a similar feat impossible today.

Michael Lynderey: It’s definitely not very good.

At first, it may be unthinkable as to why these characters are inclined to support Petit in his insanely perilous plan. “Except”, he adds triumphantly, “he doesn’t put his body on top of a curtain across a valley, and I do”. Ben Kingsley and Gordon-Levitt delivered great performances. “You have to have that in your make-up to do what he did. In movie terms, it’s stunt work, but in reality it’s really probably ballet”.

Petit (Gordon-Levitt) narrates his journey from France to New York in retrospect, breaking the film up and preventing many scenes from being too long. The cops who arrest Petit in The Walk are annoyed but worshipful. It isn’t just that Petit’s grace and balance reminded me of those stilt-walking swamp-dwellers, though I have no doubt that if the eager Petit were swept off to Fury Road, he’d scamper over to the bird-men, swipe their stilts, and say, “Let me try!” “There’s a purity of experience on the wire that you don’t get anywhere else, because you’re above the earth, a lonely little dot in the sky”. The veteran Hollywood creator of pseudo-folksy spectacles (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Cast Away) still has his tendency toward cuteness at all costs – the entire buildup to Petit’s walk is a slog through froth – but in this case it fits the story.