‘The Walk’ is ‘giving audiences vertigo’

The Walk, Robert Zemeckis’s 3D retelling of the tightrope artist Philippe Petit’s infamous 1974 high wire walk between New York’s towers, is giving viewers vertigo.

After this weekend’s press screening of the film at the New York Film Festival, a number of critics, including The Guardian’s Nigel M. Smith, described the vertiginous effects of watching the real-life drama. Following the film’s premiere on Saturday night, a number of audience members reported feeling physically ill after watching Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit in the movie’s key sequence, in which the artist balances 415 metres above the ground without a net.

“Reports of guys vomiting in the Alice Tully men’s rm post-The Walk: True,” tweeted journalist Mark Harris. “Witnessed it/came close. Bad visual trigger for vertigo sufferers.”

“The last 20 minutes of the film I had to look away a couple of times because of the sensation of the height,” Denise Widman, board director of the Boston Jewish film festival, told the New York Post. “I felt a little bit queasy. I felt nervous. It was a tingling sensation and some anxiety.”

Percival Arguero-Mendoza, 30, a filmmaker from Mexico City, added: “It felt very real. I felt a knot in my stomach. It’s like my head was reeling, but I was not dizzy. The audience got a fear of him falling. It’s like actually picturing in your mind him falling. You really get a sense of depth.” Zemeckis, the Back to the Future and Romancing the Stone director whose recent films include motion captured 3D efforts such as Beowulf and A Christmas Carol, said at a press conference following the film’s debut screening that he was intending to create vertigo in viewers.

Referencing Man on Wire, British director James Marsh’s Oscar-winning 2008 documentary film about Petit’s death-defying high-wire feat, he said: “The thing I always wanted to do was present the walk itself, and of course that can’t be done in the documentary because there’s no video footage of the walk ever recorded. [The goal] was to evoke the feeling of vertigo. We worked really hard to put those audience up on those towers and on the wire.” The Walk has largely met with positive reviews, with critics praising the depiction of the central daring high wire stunt. However, some, including The Guardian’s reviewer, were left unimpressed by Gordon-Levitt’s attempt at Petit’s French accent, and the decision to include a cloying voice-over.

Don’t miss it

The Walk is currently showing in UAE cinemas.