Tonight, (June 11, 2012), I went to see The Wall, a concert put on by Roger Waters. It was a pretty fantastic performance. I had at this point only seen the movie once, and that was about 6 years or so ago, so I didn't really know what to expect.
If any of you have ever seen a Pink Floyd show, you would know that it is more than a concert, it relies heavily on storytelling elements. They used props and projections, and puppets and carefully timed construction to tell the story of a man named Pink Floyd, who is building a mental wall to keep people out, but then finds that it also imprisons him, and his struggle to get back out.
I really liked the use of the bricks in the wall. As the first half of the story played out, stage hands were building the wall out of white bricks. The bricks were each about 5 ft by 3 ft, and looked like they were pretty light, leading me to believe they were made of light Styrofoam, or card board. I sat in the far balcony, so I couldn't get a good look at their construction. By the time intermission rolled around, the wall was complete. The second half of the show was really cool because the wall served as a projection screen to show some pretty awesome imagery. A lot of which was taken directly from the movie, but some was changed for the show. The story deals a lot with WWII, but during the concert, a lot of things were changed to reflect the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The same message is sent however in that people are used as stepping stones for the country to bring terror onto others. There was actually a written message on the wall that said something to the likes of,
"Every weapon, every tank, every bomb represents in it's final sense, a theft from those who are hungry and not fed, from those who are cold and not clothed."
:: update:: I found the quote I was looking for,
"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."
This message was pretty in your face the whole time, actually. In the first half of the show, the really precise projection system showed a picture of a different soldier, or civilian who has lost a life because of the war, on the face of each brick. It looked like one of those pictures made out of 1000 photos. This basically is supposed to mean that we are just tools that are used by the government to keep people out, and to keep us in. Like we're just livestock or something. This imagery also reminded me of the Great Wall of China, wherein people who died while building it were just built into the wall serving as mortar. I am not sure if this is true, but that is definitely the rumor.
There were obviously some more, "don't trust your government" overtones, but I wouldn't say that the narrative is actually all that shallow. There were a lot of other themes, such as the loss of innocence, the damage of overbearing parents, the realization of the state of the world, self destruction, and many others. This is the story of every man, and his struggles. Of every person, and their individual wall. It's really deep. Watch it, and then watch it again.
Actually, you can find the movie legit on Youtube on RogerWatersChannel http://www.youtube.com/user/rogerwaterschannel
Here is the direct link to the movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jTmMU6sMgM
Also, the song "Hey You" was cut from the official release of the film. It is supposed to go between "goodbye cruel world" and "is there anybody out there?" . Here is the link for the cut portion of the film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B4N_-NIBZA&feature=plcp
While watching the movie, or after watching it the first time, I highly suggest reading the complete analysis of the film because there is a lot of symbolism and metaphor used in the film and it is explained in the analysis.
http://www.thewallanalysis.com
If you'd like to see some pics from the concert, check out this guy's page:
http://clarencegrad72.blogspot.com/2010/10/wall.html
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