Unforgettable journey

Studio movies, at their best, take our breath away with visual spectacle while still delivering a good story. The Walk, directed by the studio legend Robert Zemeckis, accomplishes that, and without Iron Man or the Hulk.

This is a retelling of tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s feat in 1974, walking a wire between the Twin Towers just as they were nearing completion. The story is part heist, as Petit and his accomplices must spy how to dodge guards, sneak gear onto the roof of the building, and rig a 450-pound wire between the towers before the sun comes up.

The first half of the movie, about the French Petit performing tricks in the streets of Paris and learning his trade from circus performers, almost feels like a children’s book. My favorite scenes were of Petit constructing models of his wire walk at various dinner tables, using whatever was on the table—napkins, chopsticks, and bowls of rice.

Indeed, Zemeckis said he first wanted to make the film after reading the children’s picture book, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. The movie is lighthearted, even in its most serious moments. “Don’t go falling!” one cop yells helplessly from the roof as Petit waltzes between the skyscrapers. (The film is rated PG for a few bad words, the general scariness of the walk, and a shadowed nude Petit who is trying to use his skin to find a fishing line in the dark.)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is entertaining as Petit, delivering an impressive French accent. Petit himself, now 66 years old and a New Yorker, spent intensive time training Gordon-Levitt to tightrope walk. To film the Twin Towers scene, Gordon-Levitt actually walked a tightrope, except 12 feet off the ground instead of 1,300 feet. By not relying too much on movie magic, the scenes are more gripping. Skip the 3-D experience if you have a fear of heights.

The Walk is a very American movie, brimming with optimism and a can-do attitude. If this film had a French director to complement its French characters, it would have spent more time wrestling with Petit’s demons. This is a weakness of The Walk: Petit says that his feats are mostly mental, and yet we don’t get a sense of his doubts and fears beyond one or two moments. You’ll be too busy sweating through your shirt to wonder about Petit’s psychological struggle.

But Zemeckis, who directed the Back to the Future series among other hits, is a spectacle director. The visceral experience of the walk, Zemeckis said, is what he wanted to separate his film from the very good, Oscar-winning documentary about Petit, Man on Wire. He wanted the audience to feel vertigo. “There’s no moving picture of the walk ever recorded,” Zemeckis said. Man on Wire uses photographs and re-enactments.

An ethical question hovers: How could Petit risk his life for a stunt like this? His mentor begs him to wear a safety harness. For Petit, that would ruin the magnificence of what he wants to accomplish. He sees wire walking as a work of art. The film makes no reference to 9/11, nor does it need to: The final shot is enough tribute.

Several of the main actors are New York natives, and Gordon-Levitt went to the top of the towers right before the terror attacks, when he was in his first year at New York University. “Those towers were part of the fabric of my childhood,” said James Badge Dale, who plays one of the accomplices. In the film, Annie, Petit’s girlfriend, says to him at one point about the towers, “You brought them to life.”

The 9/11 memorial replicates the footprint of the buildings. Gordon-Levitt went there recently and walked an imaginary wire between the South Tower and the North Tower. “It’s a long walk,” he said.