‘Roger Waters: The Wall' is an epic watch of powerful music
Music can be powerful. Incredibly powerful. It can agitate for social or political change, lament or celebrate love and speak for the collective. Other music speaks directly to the soul, the afraid in each of us, the trauma and the hurt. It can teach us lessons, inject new ideas, inspire and decelerate thoughts or speed up personal metamorphosis.
Such is the power of Pink Floyd's music. And it's been around 45 years since the band released The Wall, toured the album and produced the first cinematic incarnation of the music's narrative. Yet, it's as relevant today and inwardly touching as it was on the first day of release. And Apple TV's now put the Roger Waters 2014 epic live concert documentary on its menu. It is a must-watch, a must-collect. But it makes you wish that you were in the audience, then.
The film is long. It stretches over two hours with beautifully shot cinematic scenes of Waters on another kind of journey. While the music and the Alan Parker-directed 1982 film tells of the character's progressive journey as a reluctant rock star and the walls – demons he must manage inside – the clips spaced between the live performance tell a contra-narrative.
Waters explores his emotional nostalgia, in many ways quietly faces his own demons and traces the actual moments and people in his family, like his dad and grandfather, who lie at the base of the original music.
Biographical account of Waters' life
Roger Waters: The Wall, after all, is a biographic recount of Waters' life, his struggle with the death of his dad in the Second World War, and being bullied at school. It's a treatise to the mistrust of the State at a grand scale. The film is Nietzsche's existentialism coupled with Orwell's Animal Farm, along with a measure of emotional turbulence that can resonate with both the dark and lighter side of our inner selves.
Roger Waters: The Wall is in forward and reverse motion at the same time. And despite the long running time and numb-bum risk, it's an epic watch.
The show is a far cry from the Dome performance in South Africa during the same tour. Here, Waters was close to unplugged and intimate. On stage in the film, he conducts a larger-than-life audiovisual spectacular that showcases his showmanship.
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If you are a Pink Floyd fan and followed the angry split between Waters and the rest of the band – the copyright punch-ups and mutual dislike between the parties – this is the moment to forget about it and just immerse yourself in the music.
Drummer Nick Mason reunites with Waters in the film and, at the end, the pair answer questions from fans around the world. The two also spend some time talking and tracing nostalgia at earlier intervals. Last year David Gilmour joined Waters in celebrating the 45th anniversary of the album.
Best-selling double album of all time
The Wall remains the best-selling double album of all time with 30 million copies sold and ranks just behind the band's Dark Side of The Moon. The latter musical sortie holds the collective highest sales tally at 45 million copies. Another Brick In The Wall Part 2 – the anthem off The Wall – has been streamed well over a billion times.
The band's progressive rock is not for everyone, and is for everyone at the same time. Because the truths in the lyrics are not unlike our own prayers for emotional asylum. Roger Waters: The Wall brings it all full circle.
Of course, there are naysayers and when the film was first released it suffered some pretty nasty reviews from critics who relegated the entire effort to an ego trip. But when you watch the work and experience the music, it's easy to see the codswallop and ignorance of negative impressions.
To fully understand the show, audiences new to Pink Floyd or anyone who has not seen Bob Geldof as Pink in the original film, must watch it. It is a cinematic masterpiece of its time and a sensory ride unlike any other. From the Nazi references to the evils of conformity, war and inner conflict, The Wall was an explainer film like no other. Roger Waters: The Wall sees it coming full circle.
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