I'm a big fan of Man on Wire. I have it on DVD and have watched it several times. The story of Phillippe Petit's crazy scheme to rig a wire between the World Trade Center twin towers, the actual carrying it out and doing the walk, was a story unknown to me before this documentary.
But the documentary cannot show the actual event. So that is where the fictionalized version, The Walk, comes in.
It tells the story briskly and efficiently. There are lots of little departures from reality, but nothing that really changes the arc of the story. It is an interesting story, and I would imagine would be especially interesting to someone who had not had previous exposure to Man on Wire or his book.
At any rate, it moves quickly for about 1 1/4 hours, then comes the real payoff. I saw this in IMAX 3D and it places the viewer up close as the wire is walked and sometimes on the wire itself. It is extremely well done. It is a view of this achievement that could only be reconstructed, as only a few still photographs of the actual event exist.
There is an elegiac undercurrent memorializing the World Trade Center itself. It is implied rather than stated, but it is quite moving.
So the 2 hours flew by and I really enjoyed this. I then re-watched Man on Wire, and all in all, it is better because it is real, but the visuals on The Walk were great.
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Topic - The Walk - tunenut 16:12:39 10/08/15 (2)
- JGL is so earnest that I eventually got moved by his spiel and the end was terrific, worth seeing at theater - PhilJ 15:49:19 10/10/15 (0)
- RE: The Walk - mkuller 16:28:36 10/08/15 (0)