Review of Man on Wire (2008) by Filipeneto — 01 Mar 2021

I am not an expert in evaluating documentaries (or anything else, I do not consider myself an authority on any particular subject), but I confess that I did not feel particularly excited about this documentary. For an Oscar-winning documentary, I think something was missing.

To begin with, the topic is quite alien to me. I am not a fan of acrobats, and I hate the circus and almost everything related since I was a child. I don't know why, it's something that I always carried with me. Furthermore, I liked the way Philippe Petit pursued his dream, but that's it. As a person, Petit seemed repugnant: an unreasonable man, who does not listen to anyone when making a decision, an artist driven by his own desire for self-assertion, with an overly dominant and self-centered personality. In the documentary, his wife says a phrase that, for me, sums up Philippe Petit's personality and way of being: "We became inseparable and, in his life, I completely forgot mine, and he didn't even care about realize if I had my destiny to follow. It was evident that I had to follow his." I rest my case.

The documentary addresses the topic correctly and is technically well done, it makes everything clear to those who are watching. However, it starts from an incorrect premise: that the public knows in advance what Philippe Petit did in the towers of the World Trade Center. The American public, perhaps, and fans of funambulism will surely know this acrobat quite well... but I, like most people in Europe, no longer even remember the World Trade Center for any reason other than the tragic way how it ceased to exist.