Roger Waters: The Wall

The film tells two things at once. One is a concert: a record of the stage show Roger Waters took around the world between 2010 and 2013, in which a wall is built across the stage, images are projected onto it, and at the end it comes down. The other is a journey: Waters drives to Italy and through Britain looking for the graves of his father and his grandfather. Sean Evans directs with Roger Waters. The reason for the journey is personal. Waters's father was killed in the Second World War when he was a baby and the grave was not found for a long time; his grandfather died in the First World War. The loss at the source of the album is exactly this. The stage show is technically large; the projection system, the puppet figures and the sound design are shown in detail. The political side is open. Waters puts photographs of civilians killed in war into the show and makes references to the arms industry; the choice caused argument in some countries. The transitions between the concert and the road at times interrupt, and the two bodies of material do not support each other everywhere. Who it is for: Pink Floyd listeners and viewers who like large scale concert films. Who it is not for: the context is missing for anyone who does not know the album, the political register is high, and the road sections break up the concert.