The Walk premiered at New York Film Festival last Saturday to rave reviews. Despite the mundane title, the film promises a thrilling depiction of Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) preparations to illegally walk between the World Trade Centre towers on a tight rope in 1974. He was the first, and harrowingly the last, person to ever attempt or achieve this feat.
The cinematography in the trailer is gut-wrenching enough, I can’t imagine what it will be like when it’s revealed in its 3D glory.
Gordon-Levitt admitted the role was challenging with his character maintaining a French accent throughout, but the real test was encapsulating Petit’s joie de vivre. Gordon-Levitt told EW,
“He’s such an optimist, Philippe. He’s such a positive thinker, and when someone believes that you can do something, then you yourself believe you can do it, and that’s when you can actually do it, when you believe in yourself.”
Gordon-Levitt experienced this optimism firsthand when Petit trained the actor in a non-stop workshop. Eight days later, Gordon-Levitt could walk on a wire 10 feet in the air, footage of which director Robert Zemeckis ended up using in the film.
Petit told EW,
“I started not correcting him, but I started giving him all my passion and all my sense of theatre and my poetry of the wire because I cannot walk on the wire without that passion and the love for the wire. I had to give that to the actor, and we see it on the screen.”
Petit was no stranger to death defying tightrope acts when he decided to conquer the twin towers, but it was his stunt in New York that held a Guinness world record for 30 years.
The Walk is out on Australian screens on Thursday 8th October, maybe watch it in 2D if you suffer vertigo…