8/10
ONE of the first voices you hear in Roddy Bogawa and Storm Thorgerson’s documentary is Syd Barrett himself. Taken from a 1968 interview, Barrett discusses returning to the visual arts after his recent “break” from Pink Floyd. “If I want to say nothing, or if I want to act in an extraordinary way, then I feel that is justified,” he says in his meticulous, if slightly stoned, BBC English tones. You could argue that he had already acted “in an extraordinary way”, as reminds us of Barrett’s many gifts, in doing so it also inevitably underscores what – and who – got lost along the way. “You couldn’t over-emphasise his importance,” says Nick Mason. “He was a creative genius.”
