Round these parts, we’ve been known to make a lot of the IMAX experience. While there are other, very fine, and to some degree technically superior systems, there is still nothing that compares to sitting in front of the grandeur of a huge IMAX screen and the power and beauty of its sound system.
This was brought home to me once again earlier this week when I got to enjoy a showing of the concert movie David Gilmour Live at the Circus Maximus, Rome.
The concert movie, taken from one of his shows on his 23-date Luck and Strange tour, was preceded by a short documentary, in which, much to everyone’s amusement, Gilmour introduced himself, for anyone that might not be familiar with him, as “a ****ing legend”.
It also gently captured the closeness of the band in the build-up to the show, which Gilmour describes as the best he’s ever toured with. Of the group, I instantly recognised the (also legendary) Greg Phillinganes, but I wasn’t familiar with Gilmour’s touring guitarist Ben Worsley. As evidenced in the film, he is a very accomplished performer, and it was slightly odd to find myself standing next to him straight after the film, drying his hands in the men’s loos! Well, it is a two-and-a-half-hour movie!
Watch a Concert, Or Be Part of One
It was interesting seeing this concert film soon after Prince’s Sign o’ the Times at the same IMAX auditorium. Prince and David Gilmour have, obviously, very different performance styles they are connected by being two of the finest guitar players of the popular music era. While the IMAX DMR process ensured that the Prince movie looked cinematic (aside from some brief soft long shots towards the end where the DMR seemed to struggle), the brand-spanking-new footage from this 2024 show has a hyper-clear, ultra-clean look that gave it a documentary feel, which is no bad thing.
Even sitting at the very back row of the BFI IMAX (a first for me), the size of the screen made the auditorium feel like an extension of the stage at the Circus Maximus in Rome: the audience members on screen moving around seemingly blurring with the people moving around inside the IMAX auditorium itself.
What blew me away, though, was the immersiveness of the sound, which never gets old, somehow sounding better than I’ve ever heard it.
While the back row isn’t ideal for a movie with surround effects, with a concert, the audio is naturally centred on the stage in front of you and the height speakers of the 12-channel IMAX array giving a wonderfully expansive feel to the sound. The applause of the audience sounded like the audience was in the room, and made it feel as if I was in the best seat in the house on that balmy night in Rome
While shamefully, I was unfamiliar with David Gilmour’s most recent album, Luck and Strange, from which much of the concert draws, I still enjoyed the tracks, especially the ones on which his daughter, Romany Gilmour, added her airy, insouciant vocals. And classic Pink Floyd tracks such as Wish You Were Here and Comfortably Numb, were nothing less than transcendent; the sound of Gilmour’s guitar playing, sublime.
Gilmour In-Person
Following the movie, the man himself appeared, speaking engagingly in a Q&A interview, in which he described seeing himself on the giant BFI screen as “ridiculous”. Answering the question of whether he had any unfulfilled ambitions, he said, in suitably rock star fashion, that he’d like to play at the Pyramids one day, if geopolitics ever allowed, and that he’d like to sit and watch himself perform, hinting at an “Abba Voyage”-style digital avatar show.
For fans who would like to see Gilmour in concert, he hinted that he was considering it and that he was working on a new album.
David Gilmour Live at the Circus Maximus, Rome, will be released in 64 countries on September 17th, 2025, with local showtimes at davidgilmour.film. While a physical DVD and Blu-ray released on the same day is welcome, I’d recommend catching it on the big screen if you can, especially in a 12-channel IMAX-equipped screen.
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