At the origin of Whatever Happened to Pink Floyd?: The Strange Instance of Waters and Gilmour we`re hardened to shots of the iconic pig floating between factory smokestacks as "The Blue Danube" plays and narrator Thomas Arnold sets the point for the word to come. I couldn`t help but think of Stanley Kubrick, who famously used the same music in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the parallels between the manager and the band.
Both Kubrick and Floyd broke the molds in their various art forms, engaging audiences in devious ways and ultimately frustrating some fans and critics. Both Kubrick and Floyd created groundbreaking works of art that have been analyzed a billion different ways, and yet they remain enigmatic. Perhaps even their creators never fully understood what they were leaving for.
As the title suggests, this documentary`s focus is on the split that drove Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour apart, ultimately fracturing the set and sending both of them on separate paths that produced albums which were right but not quite as large as the medicine they created together. If you`re looking for a comprehensive look at the band`s history, you won`t get it here: the early years with Syd Barrett are glossed over, with the story picking up during the spell in back of Animals.
The members of Pink Floyd began to blow apart during that tour, but they were joined in their defeat with fans who they felt didn`t regard the music, preferring to set of fireworks and behave in other obnoxious ways during concerts. That attitude culminated in Waters spitting on fans in Toronto. He subsequently expressed remorse for his actions, but he channeled how he felt into the music that became The Wall, complete with a new tour during which a real wall was erected between the hearing and the band.
It`s clear, though, that a fence between Waters and Gilmour was also building during this time. Conventional wisdom has ever held that Waters simply took creative master of the band, refusing to let anyone else to bring to the music, but this documentary makes it cleared that world is a bit muddier than that. Waters, for example, says that he asked for contributions from the rest of the ring but received none. As Akira Kurosawa`s film Rashomon makes clear, Truth, with a capital "T" is an elusive beast.
This documentary also moves beyond The Wall covering the last shuddering gasp known as The Final Cut and Waters` solo work, as good as the two Pink Floyd albums Gilmour produced after he and Waters settled their legal differences. While the world of A Momentary Lapse of Cause and The Division Bell are covered extensively, it`s a pity that not as much care is paying to the development of The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking and Radio KAOS. The band`s reunion at Live 8 is covered too, along with Waters and Gilmour`s pairing at a 2010 charity event. Unfortunately, since Richard Wright passed out in 2008, the four can never officially reunite again.
Arnold establishes the model for the history through his narration, while archival interviews from the band members fill in the holes. The support of the DVD case notes that this is "an independent review, unauthorized by band members," so none of them actually spoke to the documentary crew. However, several journalists did, including: Mark Blake (author of Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd); Nigel Williamson, who contributes to various magazines; Andy Mabbett (author of Pink Floyd: The Music & The Mystery, among other books around the group); and Chris Ingham, who is a player and a journalist. Supertramp saxophonist John Helliwell, who brought in Gilmour to work on his band`s Brother Where You Bound? album, also pops in with his thoughts.
Those contributors make a lot of interesting insights into the band, giving us an external viewpoint that no number of interviews with Gilmour, Waters, Mason, and Wright could ever equal, since they were too near to everything that was happening. Ingham also offers a few music lessons that explain how the lyrics and melodies complement each other in around of the band`s most popular songs. Fans of the ring will value the great number of archival concert and behind-the-scenes footage and pictures in this documentary.
The support of this DVD case also says that extended interviews are included, but I couldn`t get them, which is a shame, since I`m sure there was a lot of cloth left out. The bonus features include biographical data near the contributors and the nearly seven-minute "When the Wall Came Down: `The Wall` in Berlin", which covers Waters` staging of "The Wall" after the Berlin Wall came down.
Ultimately, this is a solid documentary that does a beneficial job of exhaustively covering its main topic. It`s a shame, though, that the DVD doesn`t include more bonus features, especially those missing extended interviews.
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