Most movies are happy to just entertain for a few hours. Some try to make you think and feel. Very few try to do something more, to offer an experience that is transcendent and wonderful, that sends you out of the theater a different person than the one who bought the ticket. Even fewer succeed. Man on Wire is one of those. Director James Marsh takes the true life 'artistic crime of the century' - Phillipe Petit's high wire walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 - and spins not only a fun heist movie but also a moving tale of spiritual uplift and beauty.

The film begins in media res with re-enactments of Petit and his band of conspirators as they sneak into the still-under construction World Trade Center to set up the wire between the two buildings. Marsh then flashes back, using actual footage Petit supplied, to fill in the gaps and to explain this strange Frenchman. Petit was a street juggler and acrobat who found his calling on the high wire; his flash of inspiration was to set up a wire in public places where no one expects to see a man walking on air. He walks between the steeples of Notre Dame, he walks over morning rush hour traffic on a bridge in Sydney. It's a touch of unexpected magnificence punctuating an otherwise normal day, a reminder of the possibilities of the world.

Amidst the archival footage and the re-enactments of the plan as it comes together, Marsh includes interviews with the original conspirators. Looking back at what they did over 30 years ago they offer context and wise hindsight... but not Petit. Given to sudden, florid outbursts of poetry and seemingly unable to keep himself still, Petit seems to be living in the moment, even three decades later. In turns childlike, arrogant, inspired and inspirational, Petit is the living heart of the movie. Marsh could have made a film out of the archival footage and with other interviews, but without Petit that film would have been some kind of PBS snoozer.

I'm fascinated by Petit. Everything about him makes me think I should hate him. He's a complete stranger to modesty, he's almost irritatingly hyperactive, he's self-centered almost to the exclusion of all others, but he's also amazing, charismatic and it soon becomes obvious that any modesty on him would be false. What Petit acheived is amazing and inspirational, and he knows it and makes no bones about it; in many ways it's refreshing to see someone comfortable enough to not be downplaying their successes.

Coming out of a mildly draggy end of the second act, the film builds to an incredible climax as Tower-top footage captures Petit on the wire between the Twin Towers. It's pure magic. In many ways we're the most priviliged audience, as the people on the ground that day simply couldn't have seen what we get to see - Petit was just too far up for them to notice that he was actually laying down on the wire at one point, for instance. It's a climax as exciting as any action scene and more moving than any bit of sentimental schmaltz in a love story. I wish I had the words to articulate why those images touched me so deeply, but the spiritual uplift from something as weird as a guy walking on a wire between two incredibly tall buildings is utterly visceral. It isn't something as simple as 'He acheived his dream!' but rather the way that a small event like that can radiate so much beauty and wonder. On one hand what Petit did was incredibly difficult and took years of planning and training, but on the other it was an incredibly small gesture that does so much. Watching him walk on that wire you have to wonder why we don't take that little step more often to create awe and wonder around ourselves... or why we don't look up more often to see the awe and wonder that surrounds us all the time.

9 out of 10