Man on Wire

Amazingly assured -- that description applies to both this film and its subject. Director James Marsh documents the astounding feat (and feet) of aerialist Phillipe Petit -- “The Man Who Walked Between the Towers” (as in the title of Mordicai Gerstein’s superb Caldecott-winning picture book -- as good as this film is, Mordicai’s book is even better, in clarity of story and impact of illustration -- see the movie by all means, but look at the book as well!) Something between a heist film like Oceans 11 and a Maysles documentation of a Christo project, this film is well done in all its various parts -- the retrospective interviews with participants, the stylized but convincing recreations of “Le coup” on August 7, 1974 (with Nixon’s resignation playing on the tv), the vintage footage and stills, the evocative music. Marsh is adept in what he leaves out as well as what he puts in -- when he includes footage of the World Trade Center being built he doesn’t need to reference its destruction, a universal memory triggered every time an airplane appears in the film. The case is convincingly made that Petit’s impish stunt was also an aesthetic statement, an acte gratuite (“There is no why”) of surpassing beauty. One is swept up into his mad passion, as were his accomplices, without blinking at his animating solipsism. It’s fun, it’s exhilarating and inspiring, but it’s no fantasy, rather a willful act that somehow evades its consequences. Phillipe is an Icarus who flies too close to the sun and lives to tell the tale, the man who didn’t fall from the sky. (2008, Images, n.) *8+* (MC-89.)

As part of my continuing retrospective of Hollywood’s second “golden age” in the Seventies, I checked out the recent dvd release of Payday (1972) -- Rip Torn is good as a dissipated country singer on the road, but his act is a little more familiar than it was at the time, and the film is not as snappy or as authentic as it might have been. Since I’m not offering a recommendation, for accurate detail I refer you to the source I find most reliable for short reviews, both online and in its printed annual guide, i.e. Time Out.

So the Olympics end and the party conventions take their place in eating my time and keeping me from movies. I keep up quality viewing with Mad Men on AMC and Generation Kill on HBO, both of which I will write about sometime soon. As for films lately, I seem only to watch what I show, and my “Visions of a Gilded Age” film series at the Clark just concluded. I have to say I was glad to see each film again on the big screen, and each (except The Bostonians) went up in my estimation, especially the final two Edith Wharton adaptations. Age of Innocence was confirmed as a classic for me -- would that Marty Scorsese made more films like that and fewer like The Departed! Among other things, it may use narration as well as any film I’ve seen; Joanne Woodward is the perfect authorial voice, integral to the film’s texture and not something stuck in to cover gaps in the story. Sure, the sets and costumes are something to see, but it’s the characters inside the costumes that rivet the attention, from Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfieffer on down. And House of Mirth, as unmirthful as it may be and merciless in its portrait of a beautiful woman in distress, comes quite close to the mark as well -- much closer to Dreiser than Jane Austen in its portrayal of society. Terence Davies brings out the emotional brutality of the situation, and a good cast led by Gillian Anderson as Lily Bart delivers the grim reality in convincing fashion. Come to think of it, this series didn’t have much in the way of happy endings. All good to great films, however.