On Tuesday September 29, Roger Waters The Wall, a new cinematic experience of the amazing spectacle that was Wall Live tour from 2010-2013, hits theaters worldwide. New Yorkers can catch it at Empire 25 with IMAX (234 West 42nd), Kips Bay 15 with IMAX (570 2nd Ave), Union Square Stadium 14 (850 Broadway), and College Point Multiplex (Queens, 2855 Ulmer Street, Flushing). I caught a sneak peak of it recently and porters are still cleaning up bits of my blown mind.
When word began to circulate that Roger Waters was working on this with a heretofore unknown-to-me collaborator named Sean Evans and that it would employ a shorter narrative work interspersed within it about Roger traveling from England to Italy by car to visit the memorials representing his grandfather and father, who died in WWI and WWII respectively, I immediately had my doubts about execution. My first concern was how anyone could possibly represent the scale of the Wall Live performance as a single channel cinema experience? My second concern was whether or not the narrative element of the piece would destroy the momentum and come off as a bit clumsy and maladroit.
I need to learn to trust the pros with their craft and to not be such a Doubting Thomas. Roger Waters: The Wall was an absolutely staggering spectacle that captured the essence of the towering live experience through superbly rendered high-definition video and prodigally mastered surround-sound audio that made me feel as though I was a fly on ‘the wall’ at one of the performances. I caught the screening at the Dolby screening room in midtown where I counted nearly thirty speakers installed throughout the room, including all along the walls, the ceiling, and back of house. [Readers’ own viewing experiences may or may not be as ideal as Klaus’ – Ed.] To call this an immersive experience is putting it lightly; I woke up this morning as though I had actually seen The Wall live and in concert.
What wasn’t immediately obvious to me is that the entire live concert element of the film was culled from several performances throughout the 2010-2013 Wall tour. It is only by noticing subtle inconsistencies, such as the changing races and dance moves of the children singing in “Another Brick in the Wall Part II,” or the fact that some shots reveal an open air pavilion while others reveal an indoor arena, that the viewer becomes aware that this piece is a celebration of a world tour and not a document of a single event.
The part of the film I was most worried about were the bits where Roger leaves his estate in the English countryside in his Bentley to make the long drive to Monte Cassino, Italy, to visit the memorial to the fallen in WWII that includes the name of his father. These scenes appear as vignettes inserted every few songs into the film. En route to the monument, he and his children visit the grave of his grandfather who died in WWI, he stops at a French pub and, in between tequila shots, illustrates to the non-English speaking barkeep, the war strategy that ultimately cost his father his life. Particularly moving is the scene where the viewer is shown excerpts from the letter Roger’s mother received informing her of the death of her husband; it not only brings Roger to tears, but it also had your man Klaus a little choked up as well.
By marrying these narrative bits in with the concert footage, this Wall Live concert experience elevates itself from a formerly mostly-autobiographical piece about a burned out rockstar named Pink going through some serious personal inventorying and turns it into a full-stop autobiography-slash-anti-war-commentary. The narrative content explicitly illustrates what war has stolen from him, stolen from his father, and has stolen and continues to steal from millions of people worldwide.
For fans of Pink Floyd and Roger Waters, this is the most unmissable experience out there since the 2010-2013 Wall live tour. To everyone else… well, you should see it too; it is a document of how far we have come with both live concert technology and cinema screening technology and is sure to blow anyone’s mind. It might also be the final word on what The Wall really represents to Roger Waters. Trailer below.
For folks in NYC: the official premiere happens Monday, September 28 at the Ziegfeld. It’s invite-only, but they are giving away tickets through Roger’s website.
—