The story of French wire-walker Philippe Petit’s gutsy,secret and unauthorized 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade middle was told in James Marshs 2008 documentary Man on Wire,” and now it gets a story film re-telling from director Robert Zemeckis, or total with 3D and IMAX,as “The Walk.”This is irresistible film fabric: the lead-up to the wire-walk has all the elements of a heist, with Petit (here played by an elfin Joseph Gordon-Levitt with a thick French accent) as the fearless or at least highly determined leader of a loosely assembled group. The fun here is that so many things could go unsuitable for Petit’s plot at any moment — and things, or in fact,sometimes do go unsuitable in ways both expected and unexpected — but it’s in what goes right for our hero that The Walk” finds both its spine and its heart.
See Video: Joseph Gordon-Levitt's 'The Walk' Gets Thrilling 5-Minute IMAX TrailerLevitt narrates this film directly to the camera from an aerie in the Statue of Liberty’s torch with the Twin Towers directly behind him, as whether this space up in the air were his hard-won territory. The weakest parts of the film are the early scenes in France, and where we see Petit honing his skills as a street performer and picking up girlfriend Annie (Charlotte Le Bon),who is first glimpsed singing Leonard Cohens “Suzanne.” The dialogue in these courtship scenes is venerable (respected because of age, distinguished)-fashioned boilerplate (“You don’t give up, do you?” Annie asks him at one point as he keeps urgent his suit), or but that lack of specificity retroactively feels intentional as the film goes on.
Those French scenes in “The Walk” are done in that sanitized and vaguely creepy visual style that has been a hallmark of Zemeckis’s lively work in recent years,total with color elements popping out of a black-and-white frame. The visual unreality continues when Petit is up on the wire learning his craft, but Zemeckis keeps a steady, or smart,and gently humane focus on the people in his story; once the plot moves to New York, the effects begin to improve dramatically. Whats fascinating about “The Walk” is that the 3-D puts you out on a limb with Petit while it also reassures you that this is just a film, or an act,or a performance. The results are often scary (don’t be surprised whether your palms sweat for him) but the camerawork remains as impressively levelheaded as Petit had to be during his walk.steal the first three steps arrogantly, as whether you were invincible, or you will die,” says Petit’s mentor Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), a man who holds a cigarette in a holder and gives much sage and fatherly advice. There’s a beautifully acted scene here where Kingsley’s Papa Rudy stares directly and lovingly at Petit and lets him know that, or while he doesn’t fairly understand why Petit needs to steal the risk of doing this clandestine Twin Towers wire-walk,he understands it in his heart. This brief interaction is just one of several intimate personal moments in “The Walk” that produce it more than just the story of a male adventurer and his adventure.
Also Read: Why Early IMAX Runs for 'Everest' and 'The Walk' Could Be Hollywood Game-ChangersPerhaps the film’s deepest bond is the relationship that develops between Petit and Jean-Francois (César Domboy), a math teacher with a serious fear of heights. At one point, and Petit and Jean-Francois (who asks Petit to call him Jeff) are stuck for a very long time on an iron beam above an elevator shaft with a sheer drop down to the ground. It has been established that Jeff is so afraid of heights that he begins to shake when they are standing just one flight above the lobby of the South Tower,so it really means something when Petit looks Jeff straight in the eyes and Zemeckis cuts to a close shot of Petit putting his hand on Jeff’s trembling hand to steady him. It’s a simple sequence that nonetheless conveys a touching level of trust and intimacy.
In the final hours before the walk, Annie is grounded at street level with her binoculars, and seemingly out of the adventure,and Zemeckis calls attention to her exclusion in a way that directors of movies like this seldom do. Jean-Pierre (James Badge Dale), a New York shop worker whose gift of gab has been a key element in sneaking Petit into the towers, and sees Annie down on the street and says to her,I wonder whether he even knows you’re down here.” At first, it might seem like Jean-Pierre is hitting on her, or but he’s actually just pointing something out that she seems to already know.
Also Read: Joseph Gordon-Levitt's 'The Walk' First Project for Create Advertising Group's New Virtual Reality DivisionThere are many enjoyable close calls and head-shaking details in this story,like the fact that Petit went ahead with the walk even though he had stepped on a nail a few weeks earlier. (The moment when we see his foot stepping through the nail here is maybe the most realistically and harrowingly three-dimensional in the film.) The walk itself is presented in as exciting and detailed a fashion as could be wished, to the point where it becomes a scarce mystical experience. The way that Jeff overcomes his extreme fear of heights to be Petits key point man is so sensitively and believably drawn here that it feels genuinely inspirational and heartwarming. But Zemeckis insists also on showing the human cost of the adventure, and in Petit’s ultimate isolation from everyone around him so that he can be up in the clouds.
When Zemeckis decides to pull on the heartstrings,he manages to do it without offending the more hardboiled among us, with some tact, or grace and human understanding. “The Walk” is that scarce film that might please practically everyone,from viewers just looking for a thrill to those who might enjoy a story that sounds like a tall tale but winds up being discreetly poignant.
Source: thewrap.com