Man on Wire: A Hysterical Achievement

We might begin thinking about this film by pondering the main character's name, “Philippe Petit.” Part of the definition of “Petit,” which I found in my French-English dictionary, is “little, small, diminutive, short, very young, slender, unimportant, petty, slight, trifling, low, mean, shabby, miniature, and feeble.” There is a clue here to the motivations of our protagonist. Throughout the film it is clear that Philippe is a small but determined man. Both qualities are important. His smallness is central, in my mind, because I see it driving his motivation to achieve something fantastically beyond the bounds of his limitations. In focusing on his smallness, I'm not referring to his height, but rather to what seems to be a belief about himself that has become a fixture of his personality. We can only imagine the origins of this problem, but we can see the results of his need to conquer his smallness. We can see this at his first glance of the towers as he rips the page from the paper in the dentist's waiting room. His girlfriend says of this, “The towers belonged to him. They were built for him.”

I think they were exactly built for him, in his mind, as something to