Joined in the Clouds
Man on Wire, Philippe Petit, and the Twin Towers while they were still alive.
Deep Life Reflections | Essay 182 | James Gibb
Before history made the Twin Towers symbols of destruction, a French highwire walker made them live.
“It’s impossible, that’s sure. So, let’s start working.”
The artistic crime of the century. That’s what they called it.
On August 7, 1974, French highwire artist Philippe Petit spent 45 perfectly balanced minutes in the leaden Manhattan skyline, 1,350 feet above ground, traversing between the north and south towers of the World Trade Centre. Just a man, a wire, and two towers joined in the clouds.
That this was illegal and unauthorised might rather be stating the obvious. But for those familiar with James Marsh’s 2008 Oscar-winning documentary, Man on Wire, or simply those familiar with the whole wonderful story, Petit’s act of criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct (with which he was formally charged—charges that were later dropped) was nothing less than miraculous, beautiful even.
At a time when the world recognises the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, it is impossible not to conjure the images of the stricken towers on that warm September day in 2001. Their eventual sickening collapse remains imprinted on the minds of everyone old enough to remember. When Marsh made Man on Wire, he made a deliberate decision not to mention 9/11, despite the film being made only seven years later. He said he didn’t want to burden Petit’s story with a token reference to what came later. Everybody watching that documentary knows what happened to the towers. Marsh lived in New York and witnessed the destruction with his own eyes. He wanted to give people the opportunity to inhabit the towers again, and in a way, rebuild them. As he said to a writer at the time, “In the film, they go up, they don’t come down.”
On the anniversary when almost every representation of those buildings will inevitably lead towards planes, fire, collapse, loss, and trauma, Man on Wire and Philippe Petit’s story do the opposite. They remember them standing.
When Petit saw the plans for the construction of the World Trade Centre all those years ago, he had a vision. He drew two enormous structures and imagined a line between them. This image would consume him. Already a highly accomplished self-taught wire-walker, illusionist, and street performer, Petit was blessed with two of the most essential attributes for such a non-conformist life: an almost absurd level of belief in himself, and the talent to back it up. Such an explosive mix made him hyper-focused on his own artistic vision, and he could be demanding, difficult, uncompromising, theatrical, obsessive, charismatic, and egotistical. Petit himself seems happy to describe himself in these terms. He’d already pulled off theatrical highwire walks in France (Notre Dame Cathedral) and Australia (Sydney Harbour Bridge). But New York was the ultimate assignment. The Towers were calling.
Man on Wire plays out like a heist movie. Petit and his motley crew of co-conspirators—some genuine friends, others a mix of post-60s beatniks and curiosities—somehow, against all odds, manage to get themselves to the tops of both towers unseen, hiding from security guards in the unfinished high floors with their trolleys of equipment. There are a few close calls, as Petit impishly recalls.
They manage to rig a 450-pound steel cable between the two skyscrapers in the dead of night as planned. But because they are hiding from guards in the dark, they can’t tension the cable properly. The rigging is rushed and untested. Instead of a perfectly straight, rigid line, the cable sags and twists. “The wire is the worst wire we ever did, and I was really scared,” recalls his friend and accomplice, Jean-Louis. Petit stands at the edge, recognising his moment has come. He’s out of time. It’s either walk or walk away. “This is probably the end of my life,” recalls Petit, “to step on this wire.”
But he steps into the void anyway.
At this point in the documentary, one of my favourite pieces of music plays, Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1. It is the most perfect choice as man and audacity come together in thin air. The classical piece is slow, suspended, and solitary. It doesn’t want to go anywhere, just linger. It is Philippe Petit. The man who walks back and forth on his wire in the clouds, sometimes sitting down on it. He is completely at peace, contemplative and ancient.
He walks back and forth eight times for three-quarters of an hour. On the waking streets of Manhattan far below, people crane their necks to see this tiny dot in the sky, like a figure lost in a painting. A minuscule human suspended between two enormous structures of glass, concrete, and steel. Doing something gloriously unnecessary. They can’t get enough.
When the bemused New York police officers finally apprehend Petit, they are as astounded as the public below. On the formal police complaint report, they simply type ‘man on wire’ when describing the incident.
Petit became an overnight star, but there was a cost. He needed other people to help him realise his obsession. Some of those relationships survived, but others didn’t. As we watch his loyal friend Jean-Louis tell his part in the story, it becomes too much for him and he breaks down. We don’t know why, but we might imagine sacrifices were made, perhaps loyalties and friendships strained. And looking back at the risk and audacity of it all could be overwhelming. It was such a big event in their young lives. These stories give the film a certain sadness and melancholy beneath the exhilaration.
But Philippe Petit’s story, as told in Man on Wire, is ultimately one of daring and poetry in the sky. At the time of his walk, the towers were still comparatively new and not particularly well-liked by New Yorkers. They saw them as ugly, inhuman, and soulless: monoliths of minimalism. One prominent architecture critic colourfully described them as looking “like the boxes that the Empire State and Chrysler buildings came in.” Petit’s walk, however, started to turn public opinion.
Petit gave the towers something neither possessed on their own: a human figure. A moment of fragility against concrete and steel on a gigantic scale. Petit created movement between two static monoliths, suspended in space and time. His walk belongs to their life. At the film’s screening at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008, James Marsh saw a woman in tears approach him. “She said she was crying because she was really happy,” he recalls. “She said, ‘I lost someone in the buildings, and you’ve given me another memory.’”
Petit’s daring allows us to remember that story, and the towers, while they were still alive.
A man, a wire, and two towers joined in the clouds.
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