Man On Wire Analysis

Man On Wire (2008) - James Marsh

The documentary Man On Wire is about a French circus performer and tight-rope walker Phillippe Petit and is dream and ambition to walk across the two world trade centre buildings on a wire. The narrative follows the build up to this event, including the process of planning it, the involvement of other people all around the world, other 'stunts' like it he pulled as well as a brief history of Phillippe himself. It interviews a number of different people including friends, past lovers and people who hardly knew him with the majority of the content coming from Phillippe himself, and the film lets these people tell the narrative without any use of a voice over or sounds of the interviewer asking questions and with minimal text overlays apart from the dates various things occurred on.

 

James Marsh starts off the documentary with heavy focus on enigma for the audience as there are a number of references to death as Phillippe talks about a dream he had in an interview setting, with a reconstruction scene of it is showed over his voice. There is an orchestral soundtrack which peaks and fades between people talking that contains a irregular drum beat accompanied by strings which connotes tension and urgency which manipulates the audiences emotions to be excited and intrigued as to what the content will be about. These two together already make the audience want to indulge in the film because they have been thrown into the action straight away and into the middle of a story and want to hear what happens to the man, before they have even been exposed to the narrative.

Throughout this documentary, James Marsh dips in and out of the main narrative of Phillippe walking between the twin towers with other stories that have occurred to him as well as referencing his past and motives for this adventure. This is a very effective technique because the audience isn't just told the same story throughout, and for a feature length documentary this is very important to maintain the right level of engagement by the audience. It also makes them have to actively question what story they're being told instead of just passively absorbing information and switching off.

During many parts of the film, there is a fairly obvious use of fictional reconstructed footage to cut to or away from static shots of the contributors speaking. Although this could be seen as quite a poor or cliché convention by some, the way it is executed is well done in this particular film due to the black and white filter used. The reason it is used is to help the audience visualise what story is being told, where archival footage is absent and also to make the film not predominantly focused on just people being interviewed in a static composition which really brings life to the documentaries narrative.

Finally, near to the end of the film, the types of shots begin to vary more and more and there is a use of a montage as well as hand held interviews. I believe this is representative of the narrative nearing its climax and the director was attempting to increase the pace of the film to manipulate the audiences emotions to make the final scenes more powerful. This is done quite successfully due to the main focus, Phillippe, being a very articulate and energetic person and giving brilliant content along side eccentric body movements which allow the narrative to advance in the way the director intended. The final speech is from Phillippe applying his profession to a wider context of how to live ones life. The music and individual shot length here is very slow to once again, pluck at the emotions of the audience and encourages them to reflect on what they've just watched because of the relaxed pace.

I believe the intended reading of this final scene was to connote that the film was not about one man and his job, dream and obsession, but a metaphor for how we should live everyday of our lives like the last one on earth.