At dawn on 7 August 1974, the French high-wire artist Philippe Petit stepped onto a cable strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. He proceeded, for 45 minutes, to walk back and forth between the two buildings, suspended more than 1,300ft above the ground. Questions hovered in the air around him: why did he do it? Was he the contemporary version of a classic acrobat? A new breed of existential performance artist? A madman with a death wish?
In the opening scene of The Walk, Robert Zemeckis’ magical and entrancing docudrama, Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) talks directly to us while standing on the torch of the Statue of Liberty, with the twin towers poised behind him. He says the question of why is one he’ll never answer, and the beauty of the film is that it gets the audience to answer it for him – to feel our way right into Petit’s soft shoes.