The audacious exploits of those who push the limits of human endeavour, of course, make for engrossing spectator sports. But while it’s one thing to be told of — and to admire — such daredevilry from a safe distance, the thrill of our second-hand experience of such exploits gets multiplied several-fold when we ourselves are pushed right into the thick of things.
Direct Robert Zemeckis, an acknowledged wizard of special effects, does just that in The Walk , a cinematic retelling of French stunt artist Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk across New York’s Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. Zemeckis doesn’t just dramatise the walk across the void, with which Petit elevated his performance art to new heights; instead, he (along with gifted cinematographer Dariusz Wolski) goads us off the ledge, hand-holds us step by dizzying step along the wire, gives us the head-spinning, stomach-churning experience of looking down from 1,362 feet up, and in every way induces vicarious vertigo of the most exhilarating kind.
So realistic is the virtual-reality experience of the last half-hour-and-more of The Walk that it doesn’t help to remind yourself, as I did, that it’s all CGI sleight-of-hand. Apparently, some viewers at the film’s New York City premiere even vomited from the vertiginous effect; I can readily empathise with their plight. My only regret: I watched it only in 3D, when, in fact, this film was made for viewing on IMAX.
Although Zemeckis saves the best for last, the build-up to that utterly lunatic (and entirely unlawful) enterprise is no less riveting. The biopic, based on Petit’s own book To Reach the Clouds , acquaints us with how the quirky Petit gets obsessed with ‘the coup’ of walking the Twin Towers, construction of which was just then being completed, and how he trains for and plans the logistics of the walk, including assembling a motley bunch of ‘accomplices’.
In particular, Ben Kingsley plays a meaty role as Papa Rudy, the circus high-wire artist who trains Petit and then provides him critical strategic inputs for the walk. But for the most part, it is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, playing the role of his life as Petit, who fills the frame.
To be fair, The Walk isn’t an entirely authentic 360-degree deconstruction of the possessed Petit, who had many unendearing idiosyncrasies. (Indicatively, right after he was released from arrest after the walk, Petit had orgiastic sex with a new fan, while his girlfriend waited all day in a hotel room; he also turned his back on his erstwhile accomplices while basking in new-found fame.) For a more honest psycho-profile of Petit, one must turn to the Oscar-winning 2008 documentary Man on Wire by James Marsh. For the small price of inauthenticity, however, Zemeckis gives us the thrill of a lifetime by proxy-putting us right on the wire. And that’s the kind of adrenaline rush money can’t buy.
