Screenplay Written by Roger Waters & Sean Hayes
Directed by Sean Hayes & Roger Waters
**** (four stars)
RATED R
"The flames are all long gone but pain lingers on..."
"Goodbye Blue Sky"
performed by Pink Floyd
music and lyrics by Roger Waters
It felt fitting to experience this film as I sat at home, thinking about and remembering my Dad on the one year anniversary of his passing this past December 9, 2019.
Additionally, I was also marveling at the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's "The Wall," released November 30, 1979. Listening and experiencing the lion's roar of a rock opera all over again, reminiscing about my very first listen at the age of 11 when it absolutely terrified me and soon became one of my favorite albums of all time, I remain astonished at the awesome, monolithic power of the work from its songwriting, musicianship, production, artistry, and most of all, the storytelling and lyricism of former Pink Floyd bassist/vocalist/songwriter Roger Waters.
Within his tenure in the band and since his acrimonious departure from Pink Floyd, Roger Waters has repeatedly taken it upon himself to re-stage "The Wall" over the years, including Director Alan Parker's artfully nightmarish film adaptation "Pink Floyd The Wall" (1982), truly re-defining it as the signature work of his 50 year plus career, one which includes several conceptual masterpieces with Pink Floyd and unparalleled lyricism overall. Yet, there is something extra and undeniable about the power and longevity of "The Wall," a work of such intense personal anguish, self-laceration, remorse, forgiveness and empathy that I have often wondered just what the consistent re-staging of the work holds for Roger Waters himself as the experience of the work feels just this short of a personal exorcism.
And perhaps it is...
Weaved into the story of "The Wall" is the character of Pink and his endless grief and mourning over the Father he never knew, who was killed in World War II. As Pink serves as a stand in for Roger Waters himself, we received a window into his bottomless sense of loss as his own Father, whom he never knew, was killed in World War II and to that end, Waters' own Grandfather, whom he also never knew, was killed in World War I.
With the documentary "Roger Waters The Wall," Waters, who co-directs with Sean Hayes, extends what we already know of the seminal album into an even more wide-sweeping political statement stretching far beyond the personal and becoming more universal and miraculously, all without altering the story and songs of the album one bit.
It is a film that is part rock concert, personal pilgrimage and socio-political document admonishing the nature of war and those who create it as well as honoring the dead and the living who will forever mourn. For a work that I know inside and out and revere profoundly, Waters and Sean Hayes' "Roger Waters The Wall" fully honored and revitalized the work as a timeless anti-war statement, an impassioned howl against the injustices of the world and a searing, sorrowful lament for all of the pain and loss left in its wake.
Essentially structured precisely as the Pink Floyd album, complete with the words "...we came in?" beginning the film and "Isn't this where..." concluding it, "Roger Waters The Wall" opens with Waters exiting the stage from a performance, returning to his English home and packing for a trip the next morning. Driving along seemingly endless roadways, he arrives at a military cemetery, upon which he regards the names of the fallen soldiers upon the walls before turning to face the rows upon rows of headstones.
With grave solemnity, Waters then pulls out a trumpet and begins to play, in honor of the dead, his composition "Outside The Wall," before being voluminously interrupted (just like as on the original album) with a full orgiastic concert performance of "In The Flesh?" during which Waters, in a crisp black t-shirt jeans and sneakers, jaunts onto the stage in a youthful abandon that fully belied his then 70 years, and then, dresses in the costume of the fascistic leader that Pink imagines himself, completely augmented by armed guards and a mammoth banner adorned with the now iconic and swastika inspired crossed hammers insignia. Placing dark glasses over his eyes, Waters, now in character and with a voice unaltered by age, begins with the now familiar lyrics,
"So ya, thought ya might like to go to the show
To feel the warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow
Tell me, is something eluding you sunshine?
Is this not what you expected to see?
If you wanna find out what's behind these cold eyes
You just have to claw your way through this disguise"
And then, with an overwhelming, bombastic sound and visual fury, the band rises to its fullest crescendo as fireworks blaze the sky and finally, an airplane sails over the audience, crashing into the stage unleashing an explosion that feels as if it was straight out of Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" (1979). Awesome, horrifying and magnetically captivating, the show and now, the film are underway.
The story of "The Wall" then unfolds just as on the original album and film. Pink, an alienated rock star, numbed by fame, drugs and an endless grief over never knowing his own Father who was killed in World War II, has holed himself up inside of an American hotel room while on tour tormented by his own memories, fears and nightmares and befriended only by the visuals and sounds emanating from the television.
He ruminates over his post WWII childhood, smothered by his well-meaning bus suffocating Mother, wounded with the pains delivered by authoritative teachers during his school years and then growing up and finding himself inside of a failed marriage, every disappointment contributes to the building of his psychological wall, which he soon finds himself trapped behind and unable to release himself from.
After re-imagining himself as a fascistic leader with his neo-Nazi themed group The Hammers wreaking havoc, Pink subjects himself to a psychological trial in which he ultimately releases himself from his self-made prison to find himself a sensitive, empathetic human being in need of love just as the rest of us.
The performance aspect of the show is nothing less than superlative and it is richly documented by Hayes and Waters who co-directed the film. In many ways, the visual scope and presentation made me feel that this was exactly what Roger Waters had envisioned back in 1979 but it took all of these years to allow the technological advances to catch up...and believe me, it was more than worth the wait.
Just as with the original handful of shows Pink Floyd performed back in 1980, a physical wall is indeed constructed throughout the first half of the show ultimately obscuring the entire band by the mid point and falling to its ultimate destruction by the conclusion. Yes, we see a band of children invited upon stage to sing, dance, chant and stand down a monstrous puppet version of visual artist Gerald Scarfe's "Teacher" character during "Another Brick In The Wall Part 2."
Scarfe's classic designs all feature heavily in animated sequences originally presented during the 1982 film version during "Empty Spaces," as well as for more grotesque characters like Pink's Wife and definitely Pink's Mother, who looms menacingly in the background during "Mother," a sequence where Waters also duets with a 1980 film version of himself and the wall itself becomes a projection screen for Orwellian statements like "Big Mother Is Watching You," as well as words of resistance, as when Waters sings, "Mother, should I trust the government?" the wall says, "No Fucking Way."
The surveillance theme is continued with the giant eyes staring into the audience during "Is There Anybody Out There?," we gather Waters as Pink sitting alone in an on-stage hotel room during "Nobody Home," we are shocked by the giant sized visual of the self-imprisoned Pink futilely racing towards the audience and crashing into the wall, which has now completely hidden the band during "Hey You," and one of my favorite sequences occurred during "Don't Leave Me Now," as the wall is covered with a rainbow of falling tears which could be also seen as prison bars.
It is indeed a staggering presentation of rock theater and if this were all we received from Roger Waters' latest interpretation, it would have been more than satisfactory, to say the least. Waters remains in strikingly powerful voice and even greater stamina as this show must be wrenching to perform night after night. And to that end, his complete band has achieved a tremendous success with bringing the original contributions of Waters' former Pink Floyd bandmates David Gilmour, Nick Mason and the late Richard Wright to vibrant life and with complete reverence.
Yet what makes "Roger Waters The Wall" strikingly different from the original album is how Waters has taken his 1979 narrative and made it even more urgent, relevant and essential for right now in the 21st century by making the experience even ore personal and exceedingly more universal.
As previously stated, "Roger Waters The Wall," is the complete concert performance bu tit is indeed interspersed with Roger Waters personal pilgrimage to visit the graves sites of both his Grandfather and Father, whom he never knew due to their deaths in World War I and World War II, respectively. We see Waters on his long, meditative drives, sometimes alone and at other times, inexplicably accompanied by an old friend, inserted and excised from the film without any sense of introduction. It is as if these people are ghosts or figments of past conversations playing inside of Waters' head.
Yet, probing deeper, we witness a tearful Waters reading the very letter sent to his Mother informing her of his Father's death in battle and we also regard Waters with his own children at the site of his Grandfather's grave, a poetic and deeply poignant visual of how the consequences of war travel through time and the impact never truly ceases when it comes to the families of the fallen.
This material more than humanizes Roger Waters, who is indeed a larger than life, legendary rock star, deftly presenting him as just one person representing the human cost of all wars, a sentiment that carries through the entire theatrical performance. For instead of focusing solely through the lens of the psychologically isolated rock star, Roger Waters extends "The Wall" almost immediately into a broader, wider ranging political statement.
In the show's second song of "The Thin Ice," the wall on stage becomes a backdrop for the faces of those killed in wars, regardless of era and/or region, whether soldier, civilian or even a child. "Vera" displays images of war time reunions while "Bring The Boys Back Home" showcases the following anti-war quotation from President Dwight D. Eisenhower:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
By the time Waters as Pink has transformed into his Hammer dictator persona (and firing rounds of his machine gun) and we are given the terrifying sequence of songs from "In The Flesh," "Run Like Hell" and "Waiting For The Worms," what was once presented as horrific inner turmoil is now an even more horrific presentation of every despot that has inflicted mass cruelties in the world. In fact, when I hear the lyrics to "In The Flesh" today, I am chilled to the bone as how closely the words mirror what has been happening in America during the Trump era, from spoken sentiments to the rise in White supremacy.
"Are there any queers in the theater tonight?
Get 'em up against the wall
There's one in the spotlight
He don't look right to me
Get him up against the wall
That one looks Jewish
And that one's a coon
Who let all this riff-raff into the room?
There's one smoking a joint
And another with spots
If I had my way
I'd have all of you shot"
Does that sound like anything you have heard in the last three years?
And so, with "Roger Waters The Wall," we now have a familiar experience firmly re-contextualized as a blistering lament for a world that always exists within or is marching towards or recovering from war and the reverberations are endlessly palpable. Which, of course, leads us to the nature of all of the walls that exist to divide us--whether it is just ourselves from ourselves, like the character of Pink, to what Waters has now grandly extended his narrative to include, which are all of the walls between individuals and cultures and based upon not much more than our own fears.
And in the end, what do we also have from "Roger Waters The Wall" but a narrative about a man missing and mourning his Father and how that specific grief remains so ever present and unending.
Which made this film perfect viewing on the first anniversary of my Dad's passing.
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