Roger Waters The Wall

seen 29 September 2015

The film, created and directed by Roger Waters and Sean Evans, is a documentary blending footage of The Wall tour (2010-2013) with Waters' ruminations while journeying to see the grave of his grandfather (killed on the Somme in 1916) and the cemetery memorial to his father (killed at Anzio in 1945).

'The Wall' - a Pink Floyd concept album from 1979 - had already spawned a movie directed by Alan Parker, and a series of tours. I've not seen the movie nor have I attended a tour performance. I have not even heard the entire album - I only have memories of marching hammers accompanying the single 'Brick in the Wall' when it was originally played on BBC's 'Top of the Pops', that jingle-like refrain 'we don't need no edyoucayshun' reverberating in the memory.

Consequently, I found narrative of the concept completely swamped by the technical wizardry of the shows, and further obscured by the intercut sequences of Waters travelling through Europe. Those for whom 'The Wall' is or was a defining expression of their own alienation will presumably be unworried by this confusion, since they can readily supply the whole structure from their memories, and the sequences from the concert will make perfect sense. To a newcomer, the transitions from bolshie schoolkid with cruel teacher and overbearing mother to crypto-fascist rock star to rag-doll accused in a nightmare trial were barely coherent, and their relation to a lost father figure not at all obvious.

In the meantime, what is one to make of the tour? The venues filmed were huge, and the effects correspondingly grand, or grandiose. (I was not aware, until checking later, that more than one venue was involved, but this explains the fact that one section is introduced in French.) It just seems odd to construct a wall across the stage in front of thousands of adoring fans to obscure the performers who, in any case, for almost everyone must have been next to invisible apart from their projections on the screen that the wall itself provided. And the fascist rock star sequence, with its updated but nonetheless chilling echoes of Nuremberg rallies, seems to encourage audience collusion. It's odd to see hundreds of fans wearing identical face masks at one point, and otherwise waving their arms in the cross-hands gesture imitating the crossed hammers (standing in for swastikas or sickles), all the while belting out the words of the songs in various states of ecstasy. The facile linking of education with mind control as the enemy of autonomy and self development seems beside the point when adulation and crowd euphoria produce such uniform responses.

The intercut sequences are a complete contrast - quiet, northern France beautifully shot in winter, the drive to Italy warmer and with more dramatic scenery; the Anzio memorial as silent and resonant as the more familiar Great War cemeteries. Waters' own intense involvement in the family tragedies embodied here is not in doubt, but there are also amusing recollections of earlier road trips, and an attractive reticence and calmness. Whether it is true that those in the Somme trenches 'must have' known that their superiors were blundering and that the whole enterprise was insane is open to question. Many thought so, but many did not; our retrospective indignation cannot be universally applied. It is interesting that three of his children appeared at his grandfather's grave, but they appear not have been involved in the trip to Anzio. The first World War perhaps still trumps the second as a focus for memorialisation.

The personal journey, and the remembrance of many victims of vilence the world over in the last century in the form of photographs with birth and death details while the credits ran, give a strong anti-war slant to the film, echoed during the concerts in the sequences of threatening aircraft releasing contentious political symbols from their bomb carriages. But, with so much visual and aural stimulus, and so much immersion in their own enthusiasm on the part of the audiences, it is not clear that this message will have been so clearly perceived.