Poster of Walking in the Clouds
What was it like to walk in the 412-meter-tall World Trade Center in New York at 1905?
In 1974, philippe Pat, a 22-year-old French acrobatic artist at the height of the World Trade Center, walked on a steel cable spanning a sky dome at the top of the World Trade Center, a staggering feat. Philip Pat's legend was passed on by word of mouth, leading to children's picture books, novels, and a film that won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film, The Tightrope Walker. This week's best film "Walking in the Clouds" is adapted from this documentary.
This week's movie channel "Good Film Has An Appointment" column, let us feel the power of challenging the limit in "Walking in the Clouds"!
The highlighter of this week's film is young actor Bai Yufan, who played the popular character Ma Debao in the popular modern poverty alleviation drama "Mountains and Seas" in early 2021.
On May 29, 2016, Ye Chenguang challenged a 10,000-meter skydive in the United States
In this issue of the Sunday film review edition of "Junlebao Film Appointment", we invited a mysterious guest who successfully challenged the record of 10,000-meter skydiving in California on May 29, 2016, and raised a bright five-star red flag in this thrilling process. He is Ye Chenguang, a member of the Chinese Explorers Association and the "first Person to Skydive chinese at a height of 10,000 meters".
"The first person to parachute in a chinese skydiving at a height of 10,000 meters" Ye Chenguang
Like Ye Chenguang, the protagonist of this week's best film is also a legend who dares to challenge the limit and experience the true meaning of life above the sky. Next, let's walk into "Walking in the Clouds" and find out!
Walking in the Clouds
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writers: Robert Zemeckis / Christopher Brown / Philip Pat
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Ben Kingsley/Charlotte Le Bon/James Dyer
Genre: Drama / Biography / Adventure
Country/Region of Production: United States
Languages: English / French / Czech
Release date: 2015-10-09
Duration: 123 minutes
Synopsis: Philippe Pat, who has a talent for acrobatic performance since childhood, meets the beautiful street performer Annie while selling on the street. By chance, Philip learned that the Twin Towers in New York were about to be completed. Since then, Philip has had the idea of walking a tightrope between the two skyscrapers. However, this crazy art has been questioned and misunderstood by a series of questions and misunderstandings, but this did not break Philippe's firm belief, he investigated the meticulous deployment, and then received the guidance of the experienced Father Rudy of the tightrope, and the help of Jean-Louis and Jeff. Eventually, between the 110-story, 412-meter-high Twin Towers, Philip began his tightrope walk.
A clip from the film Walking in the Clouds
Crazy art above the Heavenly Dome
On the morning of August 7, 1974, a bizarre picture appeared under the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York: hundreds of pedestrians stood like statues and gathered here. As if hypnotized en masse, they looked up and looked at the roof of the Twin Towers in unison, looking into the clouds.
Stills from Walking in the Clouds
Just a few hours earlier, it was about to break dawn, and the whole of New York was still asleep. On the top of the south tower of the Twin Towers, Philippe Pat and his companions are in a desperate situation.
Since the construction of the Petronas Twin Towers began, Philippe and his companions have spent six years developing a thorough plan, learning to build equipment and studying the structure of the Petronas Twin Towers. They repeatedly disguised themselves as tourists, construction workers and white-collar workers to obtain detailed information about the building, and Philippe even pretended to be a reporter for the French architecture magazine Metropolis. And all for Philip's dream of walking on a tightrope between two towers at 412 meters high in the Petronas Twin Towers.
On the eve of the realization of their dream, Philip and his party encountered many crises: in order to avoid security, they hid motionless on the beams of the elevator shaft for 3 hours; when installing the equipment for tightrope walking, ropes and 200 kilograms of steel cables accidentally slid down hundreds of feet; at the last moment, a mysterious visitor broke into the scene... Where will it all go?
Next, let's get to know the artist who created the miracle of "walking in the clouds" - Philippe Pat.
Artist Philippe Pat walking in the clouds
French acrobatic artist Philippe Pat
Philippe Pat was born on August 13, 1949, in a small town in France. Born into a middle-class family, Philip grew up rebellious and indulged in fanatical hobbies. Magic, juggling, fencing, and bullfighting were all-powerful, which caused his father, a retired pilot and writer, a headache. Defying the circus's formulaic performances, he created his own street image on the sidewalks of Paris. At the age of 16, Philip took his first steps on a tightrope and soon began performing on the streets.
When 17-year-old Philippe Pat was waiting in line at the dental clinic to see a dentist, he made the decision to go to the Petronas Twin Towers to complete the tightrope walking feat. A concept map of the World Trade Center in New York in a magazine caught his attention at the time, and he used a sneeze as a cover to tear up the page and hide it in the middle of the creek. It was 1968, six years before Philip had achieved his dream.
Philippe Pat in the Twin Towers
In the six years before Philip realized his dream, he had actually accomplished two feats that shocked the world. In June 1971, he completed a walk on a tightrope between the twin towers of Notre Dame Cathedral without permission. Two years later, he travelled to Sydney, Australia, to perform the feat again on the Harbour Bridge. At this time, he was only 22 years old.
On August 7, 1974, after years of careful planning, Philip Pat finally got his wish and staged a thrilling tightrope walk at the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Philip became a sensational figure in the world, and the greatest feat in the history of art was recorded in history. Inspired by it, children's picture books, novels, and a film that won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, Tightrope Walkers, were born. So how will this documentary-based film "Walking in the Clouds" recreate this event and bring a new visual feast to the audience?
Poster for the documentary "The Tightrope Walker"
The Shadow of a Thousand Faces "Lutherf"
Philip Pat said that I had to put in hundreds of hours of practice, but what really made me a tightrope walker was passion, soul and spirit. He said that these qualities are all seen in the actors who play themselves in the film.
This person is well known to Chinese audiences for starring in the film "Inception" directed by Nolan, and because his funny expression resembles the Chinese character "囧", Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is affectionately called "囧Sef" by the majority of fans.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
The monikers of Yuppie, Rogue, Robin, And Joseph are too numerous to mention, which happens to be the best example of the man known in Hollywood as the Thousand Faces.
Stills from the movie 500 Days with Summer
Born in Los Angeles in 1981, Joseph became a popular child star at the age of six, and at the age of 11, he played a rival role with Brad Pitt in the film "Big River Love".
The young actor excels at playing roles that span a wide range of roles. In the comedy romance "500 Days with Summer", he is a young literary and artistic Tom full of British melancholy, sometimes sunny and full of vitality; sometimes depressed and hurt by love. In the brain-burning sci-fi suspense film "Inception", Joseph transforms into a handsome and witty agent Arthur, who is extraordinary and witty, and has become Leonardo DiCaprio's reliable right and left arm.
Joseph played Arthur, The Little Plum's assistant in Inception
This time in "Walking in the Clouds", he was able to walk alone on a tightrope after eight days of devil training personally directed by Philip Pat.
After filming this play, "Luceff" even found the commonality between "tightrope walking" and "acting": "You are in a film, immersed in performance, but everything around you is noisy and disorderly, all the distractions surround you, and you have to divide yourself from it, not thinking about the things that might distract you." 」 It's almost the same as standing on a steel cable. ”
Robert Zemeckis
"Tech maniac" Robert Zemeckis
Like Philip Pat, the director of Walking in the Clouds is also a challenger, and he is Robert Zemeckis.
You may feel a little rusty when you mention the name Robert Zemeckis, but when it comes to familiar films such as "Back to the Future" and "Forrest Gump", you will certainly not be unfamiliar. Yes, these are zemeckis masterpieces, classics in the history of cinema. He himself, however, was so low-key that American audiences often mistakenly thought his films were the work of other great directors. Zemeckis is best known for his special emphasis on improving and innovating film technology. For special effects technology, Zemeckis is not as sharp as Cameron, keen to create visual spectacle, but chooses to hide the special effects and serve the story. Among their new Hollywood tech-stream directors, Zemeckis was low-key, humble, slightly conservative, and stuck to the American way of storytelling.
Back to the Future trilogy
On how he fell in love with movies and became fanatical about technology, Zemeckis once confessed that his father worked in the construction industry and his mother was a housewife. He grew up watching TV and then watching movies. The illusion created by the film fascinated him, how to make a visual effect, how to combine sound and picture, he was puzzled. He wanted to explore, just as Philip Pat kept pushing his limits.
Robert Zemeckis and "Roger the Rabbit"
In Walking in the Clouds, director Robert Zemeckis uses the film's special effects to present a spectacular picture of Philip walking a tightrope between the Twin Towers. The film offers the viewer an immersive visual experience — a re-enactment of the World Trade Center, a restoration of New York in the 1970s, a dizzy thrill from a height of 1,400 feet — and the film's special effects and graphics are seamlessly combined. Robert Zemeckis was even more gracious, "Walking in the Clouds is the most spectacular special effects film I've ever made, and its authenticity and visual impact are an incredible feat. ”
In 2001, the "9/11" incident that shocked the world broke out, and the Twin Towers collapsed due to terrorist attacks, philip's feat has since become a masterpiece of history, but it has long been with the building, forever integrated into The city memory of New York.
In 2019, philip Pat, who is nearly 70 years old, appeared in the glass house of a famous attraction in New Canaan, Connecticut, USA, performing a tightrope walk. He said that as long as you practice diligently, age is not an issue at all. Life should be on the brink of life, not following the rules, and seeing every day, every year, every thought as a real challenge so that you can be a tightrope walker.
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