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Sunday 12 October 2008

The tightrope walk and the terrorists

Sarfraz Manzoor talks to Philippe Petit, whose stunning walk between the Twin Towers in 1974 is the subject of a new film — and discovers the mirror image of the horrors of 9/11

It was one small step, but for Philippe Petit it was to be a giant leap into immortality. The date was 7 August 1974, the location New York City and the 24-year-old Frenchman was standing on the top of one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center preparing to commit what became known as the artistic crime of the century. Petit, tousle-haired and baby-faced, had been planning this moment for the past six years and now, perched 1,350 feet above the New York streets, he was about to take his first step onto the steel wire he had suspended between the Towers. It was 7.15 in the morning when Petit slowly moved his foot and put it on the wire. For the next 45 minutes Petit walked, danced and lay on the steel wire, pirouetting in the clouds and talking to the seagulls as an astonished crowd gathered below. By the time he was arrested and charged with trespass, news of Petit’s performance had circled the globe, the most astonishing event in the young history of the World Trade Center.

‘O death in life,’ wrote Tennyson, ‘the days that are no more.’ James Marsh’s feature documentary Man on Wire, which revisits Petit’s walk between the Twin Towers is, among other things, a joyous ode to living and a lament for the days that are no more. It makes no explicit mention of the events of 11 September 2001, but death hovers on the fringes, like distant dark clouds threatening the clear blue sky, and our knowledge of what later befell the Towers coats the innocent lunacy of Petit’s actions with poignancy.

When he was arrested by the New York police for trespass, the question that everyone wanted to ask the young Frenchman was: ‘why?’ It certainly was not for the money; despite countless offers in the aftermath of his astonishing feat, Petit refused all opportunities to cash in on his fame. At the time he resisted any easy explanation for his acts. ‘When I see two oranges, I juggle,’ he had told reporters; ‘when I see two towers, I walk.’ In Man on Wire he tells Marsh, ‘I did something incredible and mysterious and the beauty of it was that I did not have any “why”.’ He may not have had a ‘why’ 34 years ago, but today he seems more willing to offer an explanation. ‘I was driven by a sense of artistic rebellion,’ he told me. ‘I wanted to do something that was intriguing, surrealist and beautiful, a performance that would be out of this world.’ In that he surely succeeded; the photograph of Petit floating above the city is like a René Magritte painting magically brought to life.

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