I missed Man On Wire at the Duke of York's but caught it this afternoon at the Odeon (I think it's on at Brighton Marina next week). This documentary was staged as an artistic heist movie (the tagline is
"1974. 1350 feet up. The artistic crime of the century.") and follows Philippe Petit as he pursues an apparently impossible dream of crossing the twin towers on a tightrope.
It's fascinating seeing the amount of work and preparation that went into creating such a spectacular event for its own sake. The characters involved were fascinating, seen in contemporary footage and looking back in modern interviews. The film is also striking for the stories not told, such as exactly how the group's friendships fractured after the event. I'm very glad I got to see this on a cinema screen, where the scale of Petit's achievement was underlined.
“I needed absolute detachment. Complete freedom. I needed to be a cast away on the desert island of my dreams.”