One of the things that makes The Walk attractive is its simplicity. We have this guy Philippe (Joseph Gordon-Levitte) taking us on his journey to becoming a wire walker and eventually doing an artistic coup. It is a must watch. Once upon a time, as a young boy, Phillipe watched a family of acrobats wire walking at a concert and he fell in love with the art. He immediately starts teaching himself and his talent is enhanced by the wire walk master Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley).
He holds mini circuses on the streets that earn him enough to survive. What he cares about the most is the adrenaline rush this gives him and not the money. Phillipe walks with his head high, not because he is proud of what he has accomplished but because he is always hunting for the highest trees to tie his wire and walk on. Then he learns about the New York twin towers that are almost complete and he goes crazy. He is obsessed with them and by the fact that they are endless in height. It is illegal to wire walk from a building and if done, it would earn you the artistic coup of the year and of course it looks impossible to do, which makes his heart boil to walk on them and walk he does.
The movie is based on a true story published in a children’s book The Man Who Walked Between the Towers published in 2003. The book recounts the heart-stopping achievement of Philippe Petit, a French man who, on an August morning in 1974, walked, lay, knelt and danced on a tightrope wire between the roofs of the twin towers. Petit was 24 years then and is now 67 years.
