Life of danger

Man on Wire captures a heartbreaking obsession | Sam Thielman

It's 1974 and foreigners are breaking into the World Trade Center. They're sneaking up the stairs to the rooftop, carrying ominous-looking lengths of cable. Soon, they'll have crept past the guards, into the freight elevator, and up onto the roof where they will probably kill a man named Philippe Petit.

Of course, this was all Philippe's idea to begin with.

Director James Marsh has put together what may be the perfect memorial to the pointless and brutal destruction of New York's twin towers in 2001: Man on Wire, a documentary about Petit, a charismatic and not-quite-sane French "wirewalker" whose dream it is to perform on a length of cable stretched between the north and south towers.