The Walk

Here we have a good old-fashioned IMAX film. By that, I mean a film similar to the often real-life, less-than-Hollywood-length productions which are all about the sheer experience of seeing awesome images on an enormous screen. Well, The Walk is not quite that, as it’s a Hollywood production with a two-hour running time, name actors, and an Oscar-winning director. But it, too, is all about the thrill of its spectacle. That spectacle: French high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s 1974 walk between the recently completed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

The movie’s even presented like one of those IMAX docs, opening with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit introducing himself as our host from atop the Statue of Liberty, just because. He narrates the proceedings with a showman’s exuberance as if we’re watching documentary footage, even though it’s really a studio re-creation. We learn a bit about Petit’s early life, his inspiration and training to be a wire-walker, some of his earlier feats, and what drove him to perform such a dangerous act. It goes on a little bit long, like waiting through an opening act to see what you really came for, but the picture and everyone in it has a humorousness that keeps it up-tempo, at least.

The lead-up to the walk, as Petit and his accomplices plan and set up for his very illegal feat, at first takes the form of an amusing little caper yarn until the heights suddenly become apparent. Even when the characters are still preparing on top of the Towers, the sky-high scenery makes the old adage “edge of your seat” quite literal. It’s like actually being way up on a tall building, with the feeling that even a tiny move will send you tumbling to the streets below. The film even toys with the viewer by visualizing some of the characters’ fearful thoughts of falling to add an element of danger. And when Petit finally steps onto the wire, it’s all absolutely breathtaking: the view, the danger, the adrenaline. The effects are beautiful and dazzling throughout the whole picture, but the walk sequence is something else (and instead of being forgotten after five minutes, the 3D actually enhances the experience). It’s so incredibly tense following in Petit’s footsteps in this safe capacity that one wonders how he was able to do it for real, but can easily understand the exhilaration he must have felt.

As for the elephant in the room (the ultimate fate of the towers still fresh in everyone’s mind), the film acknowledges it in an oblique and subtle fashion that’s heartfelt without casting a somber aura on the whole thing. On the contrary, the prevailing emotion when the credits roll is joy and amazement at having seen something really cool.