Walking in the Clouds

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"Life should be lived on the edge of life. You have to exercise rebellion: to refuse to tape yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge — and then you are going to live your life on a tightrope."

Philippe Petit

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The news of Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center on Aug. 7, 1974, didn't pass without notice. The New York Times, for example, devoted a fair amount of space to the story the next day.

But it was overshadowed by bigger news. What could be bigger? Well, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency a couple of days later. The buildup to that really dwarfed everything else.

But enough photos and films were made that, when combined with interviews and re–enacted scenes, they formed a solid foundation for a documentary on the event, "Man On Wire," that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 10 years ago today.

Unless you're talking about Michael Moore's films, which are in a category of their own, most documentaries — no matter how well done or informative — don't tend to be financially successful. "Man On Wire" was no exception, earning less than $3 million at the box office in a year when the 10 highest–grossing movies raked in at least $419 million apiece.

In terms of revenue, "Man On Wire" was way down the list.

"Man On Wire" wasn't financially successful, but it did succeed at telling a compelling story by which film critic Roger Ebert admitted to being "helplessly engrossed."

Ebert also acknowledged having a fear of heights.

Not being a wirewalker, I appreciated the fact that the movie went over the extensive preparation that Petit and his team undertook. They constructed a rehearsal wire in a country field that Petit used frequently, then he practiced in real places — the bell towers of Notre Dame and the towers of Australia's Sydney Harbour Bridge.

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Those walks were harrowing enough to watch, but then Petit was ready to move on to the World Trade Center, which was still being built when he first decided to take his walk.

But, as Ebert observed, Petit "never just 'walked' on a wire. He lay down, knelt, juggled, ran." Things you wouldn't think a human could do on a wire at any height, much less dangling some 1,300 feet above the ground — especially someone with no formal training for that. He taught himself how to walk on a wire.

Petit was meticulous in his preparation, though. The practice wire in that field, while only a few feet above the ground, had been approximately the same distance he would later walk between the twin towers. To simulate the precarious winds that could pop up without warning and cause all kinds of movement, he had his colleagues tug at the wire during his rehearsals.

All the details of that walk were laid out for the viewers in the movie — including how the wire was strung between the buildings.

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Petit was taken into police custody after his walk was completed, and the title of the movie was taken from the police report.

"It may have been illegal," one of Petit's colleagues said, "but it wasn't wicked or mean."

As I watched the movie, especially the parts that showed the World Trade Center, I couldn't help thinking of the post–9/11 attack scenes I saw of the towers' facade, all twisted amid the smoldering wreckage.

But director James Marsh wisely chose not to so much as mention what would happen to the towers nearly three decades after Petit's walk. It was a separate story. A native New Yorker, Marsh said his movie was a gift to the city and that he believed it would be wrong to mix the wirewalker's triumphant tale with the one about the terrorists.

I couldn't control the direction my thoughts took when I watched the movie, and I was powerless to block memories of that awful day, but I have to agree that Marsh's decision was the right one.

"Man On Wire" won an Oscar for Best Documentary.

Shredding the Envelope on Sexual Boundaries

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Polarization is the new normal — and not just in politics.

And "Adore," an Australian–French movie that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on this day in 2013, was as polarizing (along gender lines) as a movie can get. At least, based on my experience.

In that experience, I have found that most women seemed to love "Adore," and most men seemed to hate it. For the record, I did not hate it. I thought it was silly, preposterous, but I didn't hate it.

The fact that the movie's stars, Naomi Watts and Robin Wright, were two of the more respected if underrated actresses in the business only partially hid the fact that, whatever else it may have been, "Adore" qualified as a guilty pleasure.

The story was simply too implausible, the circumstances too flimsily connected. I heard the movie described once as a chick flick for grandmothers. That summary vastly oversimplified things, but there was a kernel or two of truth in that description.

I suppose there were reasons for interpreting it that way. After all, the general plot was about older women who were sexually involved with much younger men. In fact, the women in the movie, who were lifelong friends, were involved with each other's sons.

Setting aside, for just a moment, the ethical implications of that situation, isn't it everyone's fantasy — at some point — to be desired by a much younger person? Wouldn't that be the best of all possible worlds — to possess the wisdom that comes with age and the physical appeal of youth?

Of course. But the setting was just too implausible for my taste. Watts and Wright's characters had grown up best friends in an affluent Australian beachfront community that seemed to exist in some kind of bubble where the normal rules didn't apply — which encouraged all kinds of behavior — and they were raising their sons in the same place.

Now, I live in Dallas, Texas, and I know there are pockets all over this city that would fit that description. I'm sure there are similar pockets in cities all over this country — and, indeed, all over the world. But this one was just too perfect for the story — the sun, the sea, the sand, the isolation.

The women were very close — so close that sometimes the male characters wondered if they were lesbians.

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They weren't, of course, and the audience knew that — they even marveled at the godlike attributes of their progeny as they watched them surfing the same waters in which the women had cavorted together as children — but there was an absence of male figures in their story that helped promote that idea among the men — and even, to an extent, among some of the women — in the movie. Watts was widowed early in the story, and Wright's husband was offered a job in Sydney; consequently, he was not around much as he was busy with the demands of the new job and getting settled.

Their sons were best friends as well, but no one suggested that they were gay.

The problem audiences had with "Adore" was rooted in the age–old differences between men and women and how they perceive love, sex and intimacy (which is not always physical) — the eternal tug–of–war between the emotional and the physical.

Anyone who has interacted with the opposite gender (in other words, everyone) knows that the genders don't see those things in the same way — yet we always seem to assume that the opposite sex will come to see those things the way we do. I don't know why we do that — and I will concede that there are some who don't but comparatively few.

The women with whom I have talked about this movie expressed admiration and praise for the story. One spoke of the courage of the actresses, which baffled me. And that could be because I am a man — but I tend to think it is more because of the insipid dialogue in the movie.

For example, at one point when Watts and Wright were speaking about the situation, Watts lamented that they had "crossed a line." Ya think? I really had to wonder how she could say that with a straight face.

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The ludicrous writing really surprised me because the screenplay was adapted by Christopher Hampton, who won an Oscar for his adaptation of "Dangerous Liaisons."

It goes without saying, I suppose, that he received no nominations for this one.

And a couple of cautionary words for any hot–blooded young people hoping to catch more than a fleeting glimpse of nudity, given such a provocative premise.

Look elsewhere.

The mothers in the story are beautiful, yes, but they and the boys who play their sons are, with maybe one very brief exception, nothing more than eye candy with clothes — skimpy clothes, perhaps, but clothes nonetheless.

Love Is a Journey

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"I have a feeling that God is going to give you a free pass on this one. Go for it."

Father Brendan (William H. Macy)

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"The Sessions," which made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival on this day in 2012, was a thought–provoking movie for me.

And, no, I am not talking about thoughts provoked by the sight of Helen Hunt in the nude, but I will make this observation on that subject — for a woman approaching her 50th birthday, Hunt was astonishingly beautiful when she made the movie. In fact, I think she would be considered astonishing for a woman of any age.

But even though "The Sessions" was about sex, that wasn't exclusively what it was about. The sexual part was more clinical than erotic.

John Hawkes played Mark O'Brien, a poet who had been handicapped since having polio as a child. The audience learned early that he wasn't paralyzed. His muscles simply didn't function as they normally would, and he had to rely on an iron lung to survive. He sought the help of a sexual surrogate (played by Hunt) in losing his virginity.

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I guess the first thought I had about this movie when I first heard about it — and hadn't yet seen it — was that, while I was sorry about his condition, his desire to lose his virginity was nothing new. Boys have been looking for ways to lose their virginity — and agonizing over the pursuit of their first time — since time began.

Consequently, I regarded it as an outgrowth of the belief that somehow every person on this planet is entitled to have every possible experience that there is — and that one has been cheated somehow if denied that. But a realistic appraisal of the world and life in it has to be that those who do get to experience everything that life has to offer are few and far between.

A very small percentage get to be rich and/or famous. Most people don't get to play professional sports or perform in a rock band. Many people don't even get to live long compared to what most people would consider normal life spans. That's the way it is. Life isn't fair. All the people I have known who have died had things they wanted to do but never did. Yet I frequently hear it said when someone dies that it is lamentable that the person never did X or Y or Z — as if that were an exception to the rule.

But when I saw "The Sessions," I realized that Hawkes' character wasn't worried about losing his virginity the way adolescent boys do. It was his way of reclaiming part of his life that was taken by polio. He also sensed that he would not live much longer (in fact, he lived more than a decade after the events of "The Sessions," but still died at the young age of 49). That lent a sense of urgency to his quest.

He may well have been driven as well by the desire to experience all the things that able–bodied people do, but one did not get that sense from the movie. It was simply an experience he wanted to have — even though one of his assistants told him that sex was "overrated but necessary" — and, in keeping with his Catholic upbringing, at first tried to have it the conventional way with a marriage partner. When that didn't work out, he pursued the sex therapist route.

An intriguing side character was Hunt's husband, played by Adam Arkin, whose love for his wife was evident and his jealousy over his accurate perception that she was developing an emotional attachment to her client could be painful to watch. He knew what his wife did for a living, that it involved sexual contact with other men, and the sensation the audience got was that he usually was not threatened by her business relationships.

But her relationship with Hawkes was, for whatever reason, different.

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What can I say about William H. Macy's performance? I've always liked his off–the–wall work. I saw him being interviewed on one of the late–night shows once, and he observed that, in his movie roles, "I never get the girl — but I am the most likely one to stuff her in a trash bag." You've gotta like a guy with that kind of sense of humor.

His character had a nice sense of humor in this movie as well, but he wasn't a homicidal maniac. He was Hawkes' spiritual adviser and friend.

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In fact, it was his character who inspired the headline I have given this post. Near the end of the movie, he told Hawkes that he had prepared a short speech "for the forlorn" that he had planned to deliver to revive Hawkes' spirits but decided he would not when he found that Hawkes was faring better than he had expected. Hawkes encouraged him to go ahead, and Macy said, "Love is a journey."

When Hawkes asked him to continue, Macy confessed, "That's it. I told you it was short."

I liked the review Roger Ebert wrote in October 2012 when the movie had its limited theatrical release: It "isn't really about sex at all," Ebert wrote. "It is about two people who can be of comfort to each other and about the kindness that forms between them. This film rebukes and corrects countless brainless and cheap sex scenes in other movies. It's a reminder that we must be kind to one another."

Untraditional Family Values

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If there is a lesson to be taken from "The Kids Are All Right" — and, no, I am not speaking of the movie featuring the rock group The Who — it is that life is complicated.

There are three ways, Roger Ebert wrote five years ago, to interpret the title of "The Kids Are All Right," which premiered on this day in 2010: "Kids in general are all right, these particular kids are all right, and it is all right for lesbians to form a family and raise them."

(Actually, "The Kids Are All Right" got a positive response at the Sundance Film Festival in early July 2010, which accelerated plans to show it commercially. It opened a limited theatrical release on this day; a nationwide release followed three weeks later.)

All three ways are appropriate — often simultaneously — in "The Kids Are All Right." In other words, life really is complicated, and it is hard to imagine a family that could be more complicated than this one (although, in this culture, we are apt to find one that is more complicated before long). Annette Bening and Julianne Moore played married lesbians, both of whom had a child from the same sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo) — none of whom seemed to be aware of each other's existence until the offspring (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) got involved, investigating to learn about their biological father.

And they went through all the same awkward moments that are probably familiar to most anonymous sperm donors and their children if they meet.

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But there were all sorts of side issues to contend with as well, most of them the kinds of family issues that probably any family, not just those headed by same–sex couples, must address.

For example, Bening was the family conscience, endlessly nagging the children to write thank–you notes.

And what I found intriguing about the movie was how similar the same–sex parents' handling of things was to what I would expect from a traditional heterosexual couple. (In fact, there was a certain sameness to the roles in the relationships. Bening played a doctor, the family bread–winner, clearly the head of the household. Moore was more domestic, a stay–at–home parent, mainly because she never really found her professional niche).

Bening and Moore played a classic modern liberal couple, supportive of their children's desire to seek out their biological father. They approved the concept; in practice, though, they found it troubling — especially since he came to represent a threat to the life they had known.

The father turned out to be a former hippie who dropped out of school and was running his own organic restaurant serving food grown in his organic garden. He vaguely remembered donating some sperm nearly 20 years earlier and agreed to meet his children, apparently more out of curiosity than anything else.

They hit it off — well, he and his daughter more than he and his son — and he was invited over for dinner to meet the moms.

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In the course of the dinner, proud mama Bening told Ruffalo about their daughter's recent graduation speech, then suggested that the daughter retrieve the text of the speech from her room and recite it right there on the spot for her father.

If ever there was anything guaranteed to evoke a rolling–of–the–eyes oh–Mom! moment, that was it. Seems gay parents and straight parents are pretty much the same once you get past that bedroom stuff.

Speaking of which, the gay parents apparently shared something else in common with at least some of their straight counterparts. They liked to watch porn while engaging in their preferred sexual activity.

Only Bening and Moore apparently liked watching male homosexuals. That was a little hard to explain — and more than a little difficult for Moore's son to understand.

Anyway, the free–spirited sperm donor learned that Moore was at loose ends professionally and trying to make a career of landscape architecture so he asked her if she would do some work on his home property. She agreed to do so, and that led to yet another complication. While they were going over the landscaping plans, they kind of, you know, fell into bed together.

Bening put two and two together and confronted Moore about the affair — and asked the kind of questions that straight partners undoubtedly would ask each other if the shoes were on the other feet.

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As I was saying, life is complicated.

In the end, it seemed to me to come down to none other than the cliched label, "family values." In many ways, they are exactly what you think they are — and, in many ways, they aren't.

These days, both sides of the gay marriage debate would have you believe that same–sex couples are so different in every way from straight couples — when really the only difference is how they make love. In "The Kids Are All Right," the household was headed by a same–sex couple whose experiences probably mirrored those of their straight friends in many ways. Both had issues in their relationships with their significant others. Both had issues with their children — well, after all, the children in this family were teenagers.

"The Kids Are All Right" received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actress (Bening), Best Supporting Actor (Ruffalo) and Best Original Screenplay.