“The Walk” (2015) is “another” film by Robert Zemeckis about a hero with a very individualized goal. This time, the subject is Phillippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who walked a cable between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City in the early morning of August 7, 1974, two days before Richard Nixon’s resignation (Watergate is mentioned only once).
Petit stunned the world (and the Port Authority Police) by
walking back and forth about eight times, doing tricks with his balancing
pole. It does seem so improbable that he
could pull this off.
Petit insists, early in the film, that he is an artist, and
his work is a bit like that of a magician.
There is a “prestige”.
The earliest scenes are shot in black-and-white Cinemascope
in 1973 Paris (with splashes of color).
Petit reads about the WTC as he does little shows for circuses and parks
in France (Ben Kinglsey plays the mentor Papa Rudy). The film says it wasn’t finished then, but I
recall talking the elevator tour in the summer of 1970.
In fact, I started a new job at NBC on August 12, 1974 and
was in the process of moving into the City from New Jersey, at the time. I remember Petit came up in the news
later. Petit certainly fit the idea of
the “masculine personality” or “man of action” in the polarity theory of Paul
Rosenfels, articulated at the Ninth Street Center which I often visited at the
time.
Much of the movie deals with Petit’s recruiting others into
his rather secret “plot”, long before the days of tight security.
The very end of the movie tells us about Petit’s fame and
reward (despite arrest), including a lifetime pass to the WTC, and sad prelude
to the eventual 9-11 catastrophe. Did
Petit make the WTC an even more appealing target?
I saw the film before a scant audience at Angelika Mosaic,
mistakenly expecting a 3-D showing. In the pre-show, Angelika showed "Serenade" from DC Shorts.
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