With Man on Wire, the American director James Marsh has created one of the greatest heist films of all times. Two things make his gripping docudrama so different: it’s all true, and the only thing stolen is air.

The story has its origins in 1968, with a young Frenchman, Philippe Petit, sitting in a dentist’s waiting room, flicking through a paper. He sees an artist’s impression of the World Trade Center in New York, then set to begin construction. There and then, Petit, an aspiring high-wire walker, decides that, one day he will walk the space between the towers. This film is an account of that walk.

It begins on Tuesday, August 7, 1974, when Petit and his fellow conspirators hop into a van and make their way to the twin towers. Through a combination of interviews with the participants and dramatic reconstruction, the terrible silence and tension inside that van are made palpable. From there, Marsh flashes back to Petit’s past: his walk between the spires of Notre Dame in 1971, then his conquest of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We see the elaborate preparations for the WTC walk — the forging of documents, the casing of the joint, the tension and infighting among the crew — then the assault on the twin towers.

These are pranksters forced to act like professional criminals. They have to get past security guards, smuggle in piles of cable and nearly a ton of equipment, then set up the rigging between the towers without anyone hearing or seeing them. No wonder that when Petit sees the towers on the first day of their mission, his initial thought is: “Impossible!” What follows is the most tense criminal operation you’ve ever seen on screen. So many times, you think their beautiful dream is dead; time and again, Petit and his crew bring it back to life.

Marsh wisely decided to take a back seat and let the participants tell the story — a good decision when you have a hero as captivating as Petit. The director also refrains from overanalysing the morals or motives of his subject. As Petit says after he has completed his walk: “Americans kept asking me why I did it. But there was no why.”

That is a questionable claim, for throughout the film you get the sneaky feeling that there’s something obsessive and egomaniacal about this man. He has the warped charisma of a cult leader; a man who turns friends into followers without their knowing it.

When Petit finally steps out on the wire, he stays there for 45 minutes, dangling and dancing 1,350ft above Manhattan until he is driven back to safety by the NYPD. Unlike his other walks, there is no film footage, so Marsh relies on photographs, which give the walk a silent and still beauty of its own.

After seeing Petit holding onto his 26ft pole, held aloft by a ¾in cable, the expression “living on the edge”, which is usually applied to some dopey, doped-up rock star, takes on a whole new meaning. These days, we often hear about the wonderful spectacles and “awesome” sights that Hollywood films offer. But nothing — not all the computer-generated wonders of Hollywood — can compare with the moving sight of this lone man on a wire.

Petit’s act has been called the “art crime of the century”, but this isn’t about art, it’s about us. His walk was an audacious act of human rebellion — one that defied the authority of man (the police) and nature (the laws of gravity). Men have always dreamt of flying through the air, but this man coolly walks through the sky with death whispering in his ear.

It’s been said that, with Man on Wire, we have, at last, the great 9/11 film, but I disagree. One of the best things about this film is that it has taken the twin towers away from the terrorists, the killers and the destroyers, and given it back to the poets, the goofballs and the eccentrics — people who see a place to dance, not a chance to destroy.

What this film evokes is not some pre-9/11 era before the terrorists struck, but a golden era before the safety-first mindset invaded our culture, wrapped our world in cotton wool and made cowards of us all. Today, if someone tried a similar stunt, he or she would be condemned by health experts, psychologists and parents’ groups for setting a dangerous precedent. We need this film to remind us that there are things worth dying for — and dancing on the rooftop of the world is one of them.

12A, 100 mins

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