Film roger waters the wall

Anything to do with The Wall, an album from Pink Floyd where the songwriting remains middle-of-the-road and its intent ambitious, must bill itself as bigger and bigger. "What the fuck was that, indeed," he later recalled. "The film gets so odd at that point, halfway through, the way that the character's examination of himself is portrayed – because that’s what it is – that I don’t know what I’d call it."

He wasn't the only one who seemed confounded by the film's unusual construction.

"I had to have a slug before I went in in the morning," Scarfe said in 2010, "because I knew what was coming up – and I knew I had to fortify myself in some way."

Production began in late 1981, with a budget of some $10 million. Though the idea of a concert film is nothing new, this version of The Wall finds all aspects covered, whether it’s viewing the creation and demolition of the show’s literal wall from the audience’s perspective, going behind the scenes on the production from the view of the band and crew members, or showing the reactions of crowds singing along and overwhelmed with emotion during the set’s most resonant moments, like “Hey You” and “Comfortably Numb”.

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Maybe the best trick the film has up its sleeve is in making the footage feel like both a singular show while still representing the touring nature of the event.

A frontman hoping to cut up the instrumental parts of a performance with close-ups of Gabriel Chevallier novels, letters from the past and a silver brass instrument, so the focus can still be on him, is rather telling.

But where the concert film aspect of Roger Waters The Wall soars, the real risk is in what separates the music. It’s a subtle detail, but one that grasps the scope of the international tour.

Fed up, Seresin left too. Waters still sounds fantastic, even in the modern-day.

Still, finding out the origins of Waters’ connection to the subject winds up being worth the risk.

Because, how can you fault Rogers for being brazen with The Wall as material? Singer and lyricist Roger Waters wrote the screenplay for it, in which the protagonist, literally named Floyd “Pink” Pinkerton, loses his mind for a variety of reasons (he’s a rock star, his father died when he was young, his mother was overbearing, kids were cruel to him at school, his wife cheats on him) resulting in the construction of a literal and metaphorical wall that shuts him away from the outside world, until eventually realizing the wall must come down.

While Pink Floyd did tour the album on its release, it wasn’t until long after the band had disintegrated that Roger Waters trucked the record around the globe, with 2010-2013 seeing The Wall become the most viewed concert tour by a solo artist ever, reaching more than four million fans worldwide.

Waters was replaced, however, after poor screen tests. By early 1983, however, Pink Floyd - The Wall had closed, having brought in about $22 million.

And towering isn’t even an exaggeration. A two-hour showcase, a behind-the-scenes look at the show coming together, and feeble philosophising of its legacy, are all put together here.

During “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”, children are employed to dance on stage, and through edits, its shown that not only are the children different from stop to stop, but their skin tones and dance styles shift to adequately reflect the culture that Waters is currently performing in. It remains a cult favorite, though Waters continued to criticize the results – in particular the way Pink evolved on screen.

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In terms of film adaptations of the 1979 Pink Floyd album The Wall, the 1982 Alan Parker-directed psychedelic classic already has things on lockdown for fans of the band.