Movie: The Walk
Release Date: October 8th 2015
Language: English
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Based on: “To Reach the Clouds″ by Philippe Petit
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Kingsley, Charlotte Le Bon
The walk – to me, it seemed like a boring story. A guy walks from one building to another. Little did I know that that was only a very small part of the movie. It all begins years and years before that, even. It’s about the journey towards that walk and way before that. It’s about his first walk and so many others.
“In 1974, high-wire artist Philippe Petit recruits a team of people to help him realize his dream: to walk the immense void between the World Trade Center towers.” [IMDb]
It starts off with Philippe, who goes to a circus one day and sees a man walk on a rope. As he gets very excited about this act, he tries to do it himself. He grows up to be a street artist and performs within his circle where he will not speak, only perform. He is always looking for the perfect place to hang his rope, but it all never seems to satisfy him.
He keeps searching until one day, he sees the unfinished towers of the World Trade Centre in a newspaper. It is 100 meters higher than the Eiffel Tower! As a high-wire artist, this is what gets him excited. Philippe decides to make this his dream and has his mind set on this one walk. He finds others who are willing to help him with this crazy goal and it all starts to look like he could do it.
One thing that kept going through my mind: oh my God. This movie started off quite fun. It had some hilarious moments, I laughed a lot and eventually it all turned kind of dark.
Once he gets to New York, the pace of the movie slowed down enough to see the entire process towards this walk. He finds more people who are willing to help, spends every day at the unfinished towers, each day in a different costume. He studies the towers, tries to find out what works and what doesn’t and eventually you start to realize that it looks as if he’s going mad.
I got all sucked up in the story. It was thrilling and exciting and there were sad times, even. I tried to keep my emotions in check, which I managed to do, until the movie gets to the point where it has finally reached the day of the walk between the towers. Time slows, you see their every move and I just felt like choking all the time. There were things going wrong, not according to plan and people were leaving him because they gave up on this walk.
I adored the fact that you really saw the characters, how they were, what they were like. It wasn’t just about Philippe, it was about everyone involved. They worked hard on it and some couldn’t handle it and this movie really made me feel what the characters were feeling.
When Philippe steps on that wire, I felt my heart drop and I held my breath for as long as I could, scared of every move he made, every sound that came from the wire. It was terrifying to think that this is based on a true story. Seriously, I would have cried if I witnessed this in real life.
This movie was exciting, funny, nerve wrecking and very VERY intense. I’d recommend this movie to anyone. It was that good.
In a nutshell:
Liked it: YES
Loved it: YES
Re-watch: YES
Cinema worthy: YES!!!!!
