It was called the "artistic crime of the century."

While the country was caught up in the final act of the Watergate scandal, a young Frenchman who had illegally performed death-defying high wire walks on the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Sydney Harbour Bridge was doing the unfathomable.

Phillipe Petit was dancing, reclining and grinning madly between the World Trade Center's buildings, 1,350 feet above the air.

This was after his ragtag team crept into the buildings in disguise, then hid out for over a day and set up the high wire across the buildings.

James Marsh's brilliant documentary, Man on Wire, covers the years, days and seconds leading up to the 1974 stunt.

He covers the team recruitment, the endless practice, the falling outs and heartbreak, with maddening precision, so that every participant, detail and emotion are highlighted.

The documentary won the Grand Jury Prize (Cinema Documentary) at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, which was held in Park City, Utah.

The film is being shown at the State Theatre today and Thursday at 7 and 9:30 p.m.

The simple premise of the film's main event of the high wire act between the two buildings, which, in the era of Fear Factor and David Blaine, should still blow away the average viewer.

But the grandiose style in which the documentary is executed also sets it apart.

This film is split between modern-day interviews with Petit and his wildly diverse accomplices.

These accomplices include a pot-smoking musician and a worker on the 82nd floor of the World Trade Center.

With expert recreations of the unfilmable break-in, lead-up to the high rise walk itself and authentic footage and photography of the team in action, Marsh accomplished what he admittedly set out to do -- make a "heist" movie, jumping between narrative layers back and forth in time.

By combining a documentary with this style of movie, Marsh tosses basically every known rule of film work out the window.

From the roving, zooming camerawork in the interview portions to Igor Martinovic's gorgeous black-and-white cinematography in the recreations, Man on Wire is infinitely more than a documentary.

The audience knows Phillippe ultimately survives the stunt and does not "fall to another life," as he would say, but the director never lets the suspense cool.

The film was based on Petit's 2002 book To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers.

It excels with its wide range of musical compositions that suit the equally wide range of emotions of the film, including scores by Michael Nyman and J. Ralph.

The key scene featuring Fleetwood Mac's ambient classic "Albatross" is sure to deliver chills as well.

But much of the film's success comes from Petit himself.

He is vibrant and passionate in interviews eloquently describing how he would "conquer the world's beautiful stages" by staying in complete focus while preparing for them, cast away on a "desert island of dreams."

The past and present goals of Marsh and Petit are expertly intertwined.

The performer exclaimes his love for the high wire as the "excitement of breaking the law without doing anything wicked or mean," and the director follows suit by presenting the film that way -- unexpected, dangerous, but never sad or cruel.

Besides Petit, the film's other main stars are the towers themselves.

They are introduced in a split-screen scene documenting the construction of the towers alongside the youth of Petit himself.

The grandiosity of the Twin Towers is key to showing Petit's passion.

Through by Marsh's insistence their eventual destruction on 9/11 is never once mentioned or even hinted at.

But the somber truth hangs over the film, adding yet another subtle layer to ponder.

In the end, it is clear Marsh and Petit's fetish for beauty in unusual places -- two steel towers, the end of a relationship, the feeling of being arrested -- is the real story here.

It is one that would be artistically criminal to pass up.

Grade: A