On September 11, 2001 at 9.41 clock, saw the photographer Richard Drew, as a man who could not stand the heat in the burning World Trade Center, in the abyss jumped. He pressed the automatic his camera and tore it down, with the falling object. Eight pictures came into existence, one was called “The Falling Man” for controversial recording of the attacks. From it does not speak no horror, at least at first glance, and the falling lines of the house front form their own aesthetic.
It is this image that a in “The Walk” persecuted, not because it vorkäme, but because it could happen. “The Walk” is from the French tightrope walkers Philippe Petit, who spanned a rope between the towers of the World Trade Center on August 7, 1974, shortly after 7 clock in the morning about balanced. Not even. Eight times. There is no footage, but photographs, and on one can see the towers, densely about an airplane and the artistes on the wire. The rope, that is the horizontal line. Falling lines are bad, horizontal well
It is worth noting that 14 years after the attacks, but there is not a big 9/11 movie -. And in a time, be started in the screenplays sometimes before an event comes to an end. Documentation emerged, and two dozen films over effects beyond the towers – but none from the heart of the disaster. The clock, the awe, the significance of what has happened condense into a kind of iconoclasm.
declaration of love to a building
There were two significant events in the life of twins, one ended in disaster and the other in triumph. “The Walk” is the “Prohibition” repealed by telling it the triumph. One might argue over who plays the lead role in “The Walk”; According cast list is Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit, one of the greatest talents of American cinema, which may never rise to superstardom, because he is too intelligent actor.
In the first hour of” The Walk “is actually he the star, as a young acrobat who hopelessly falls hovering in ever greater heights, and discovered one day in a magazine at the dentist, the two loves of his life, which is still in construction at the twin towers, the North and the South Tower. These make the main character but as soon as he arrives in New York, serious competition. There are many films that use of spectacular buildings make – but hardly one that a declaration of love for a building as close as “The Walk”.
Robert Zemeckis most interesting film since “Back to the Future” and “Forrest Gump” wants to be a work on beauty. Petit, who combines French talent for flair and the American for show in itself declares repeatedly that he had no sensation Artist, but an artist, and his performance should be no great feat, but a piece of art.
For this he represents Zemeckis, in the truest sense of the word, both his art aside. As he shows – ie digitally reconstructed – they are turned to stone marvels human spirit, of the American spirit.
A film like the Italian line males
On the one hand they are marked built as of people, because you see, like thousands of busy hands advance the interior design; that the towers unfinished and security was lax, Petits has secret action – which would never have been approved – only made possible. On the other hand, they are mythical figures, two giants that sets the movie without any political, economic or practical context in the landscape. And from every perspective unrestrained worship.
There are two kinds of beauty, which seeks to connect Zemeckis: the compact, powerful two giants – and the delicate, ethereal an artist. It was in the eighties, a famous Italian cartoon character, “La Linea,” a nagging line males. The principle of the series was to be males and scenery created entirely of a single horizontal line (which ran out of the picture left and right). A similarly simple but visually ingenious construct was Petits experimental setup: a straight line, which rests on two pillars left and right, and from which rises a male, a balancing pole in his hand.
With such an – abstract – Beauty Zemeckis has nothing on his hat. That here less Petit as the landmark, a monument to be set, already provides the director clearly the fact that it puts him right next to the torch of the Statue of Liberty, tell with unobstructed views of the current skyline without the Twin Towers, and of his former feelings and visions leaves.
Technological aberrations
Then he packs the latest technology from which the cinema is available, like the time the twin towers constituted two exclamation marks a technological superpower. Zemeckis was in the new millennium of the pre-driver of motion capture, is inserted in the Actor in a body suit and registers every movement, including facial expressions and transferred to cartoon characters in the computer. It took three movies (“Polar Express,” “Beowulf”, “Christmas Story”) before Zemeckis desisted from this mistake. “The Walk” is a return to a position where the technique again in the service of man is rather than vice versa.
And so this slender man stands on its narrow rope 400 meters above the abyss, and it chases us shiver of fear of heights through the spinal cord (assuming we have the 3-D glasses on), and we can not assume free, even though we know that everything is animated (and Gordon-Levitt three meters above the ground balanced in the studio, after all). It is the most breathtaking limbo, which we ever were at the movies received, and a few moments when the rope disappears halfway in a cloud, it is believed in a Magritte painting.
The perspective of a gull
However: Even Zemeckis is a showman, as Petit. One of them is not satisfied, to survive the 60 meters between the towers alive, he also lies down on the rope and executes a curtsy of thanks for the astonished audience. The other allows a Balancierstab from a great height to fall directly into the camera, filming the first step on the rope in extreme close-up, or take the same perspective of a seagull, which shut encounters Petit.
A tightrope walker, the hammered into Petits Mentor (Ben Kingsley in his finest role for a long time) to his pupil a never looks down. Zemeckis, however, constantly forcing our views there. He exaggerates. He calculated. Beauty comes from courage, indeed of madness. Here it evaporates eventually in showing off.
It’s just, sigh, a Hollywood film , and a sentimental-patriotic to. We recall that France, when it was George W. Bush’s 9/11 Revenge in Iraq refused, became the nationa non grata in the US and French fries were renamed freedom fries in.
fact that it was a Frenchman was elected, the towers (which contrary brought the New Yorker originally little sympathy) to plant something like a human soul, also testifies to the gracious resumption of France in America’s favor. Philippe Petit, however, have to pay a price. In the original version of “The Walk” he admonished his countrymen constantly “Speak English, speak English!” And untiring he sings the praises of the towers.
It’s monumental. It’s embarrassing. It is understandable. It’s still grieving.
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