TITLE: Pink Floyd The Wall
TAGLINE: N/A
DESCRIPTION: Loosely based on the life story of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's original front man (who was kicked out of the band for his bizarre and disturbing behavior only to go insane shortly thereafter), PINK FLOYD: THE WALL stars Bob Geldof as Pink, a mentally damaged man who has gone from a hopeful child artist to a burned-out rock star drifting away from reality. [RottenTomatoes]
DIRECTOR: Alan Parker
YEAR: 1982
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: U.S.
RUNTIME: 95 min
SUBTITLED/DUBBED: N/A
IMDB PAGE
ROTTENTOMATOES
REVIEW:
No film makes a stronger argument than Pink Floyd The Wall that life itself may cause Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. (I wonder after watching this, should pregnancy tests be accompanied by warning labels?) From birth to death, to the tyranny of war, school, parents, sex, disease, and social order, nothing in this film strikes without leaving its mark on the psyche of one "Pink", the central figure in a series of loose vignettes that serve as narrative.
I say "loose" because while each piece is a coherent fragment in its own right, these pieces stop fitting snugly together as the film progresses -- like a series of photographs laid over one another to give the semblance of a panoramic view. I don't mean to imply this is a bad thing: It's just part of this particular film-verse that things don't quite fit together in anything more than an impressionistic sense.
Because the point, ultimately, is for the music to tell a story; and while a single song can have narrative cohesion in and of itself, albums aren't expected to sustain that same perfect narrative all throughout. Nonetheless, to listen to a complete album, one expects an overall flow, an overarching mood -- and in emulating this aspect of the original medium, Pink Floyd The Wall doesn't disappoint.
In early scenes Pink is young -- he's lost his father to WWII, seeks out another father figure, has mother issues, is alienated by his education system. In later scenes, Pink is a drug and booze-addled rock star, jaded by fame and on the precipice of a mental breakdown. In fact, it's this breakdown which ultimately frames the film, with intermittent scenes pivoting around his colleagues discovering him after a show, semi-comatose in a wrecked hotel room he's reconstructed in his own, incomprehensibly ordered way.
And yet, the flow of Pink's life is not singular: Beyond the haunting, interspersed cartoon animation of Gerald Scarfe, there lies the counter-life of adult Pink as the head of a fascist organization (with its own, interwoven rock opera performances, if you can believe it) -- which has nothing to do with Syd's real life, but everything to do with richness of metaphor developed throughout the whole of the film.
What is this metaphor? Well, Scarfe's imagery is as good a place as any to elaborate on its nature -- the subject of which is all too often confused with the object in public discourse.
Of course, there's good reason for thinking the film is just a scathing commentary against fascist rule -- foreign and domestic alike. For one, the animation sequences are rife with German planes, the Union Jack, and skeletal corpses turned to crosses, to say nothing of marching black and red hammers, beast-like shadow-dwellers in gas masks scurrying for shade, the black eagle of Nazi rule casting its deathly pall over a red sky, and law enforcement bashing in the brains of a man cowering before an oppressive, life-taking wall.
Moreover, with tragic real life sequences clearly demonstrating how war destroys families (if you haven't got it by "Bring the boys back home / Don't leave the children on their own - no! - no! - no!", sung by a united front of returned soldiers with their wives and families at a train platform, you never will), it's easy to see how the subject of war and especially fascism dominates the film's imagery.
Nonetheless, fascism isn't the subject of these walking hammers, these rallying cries for post-conflict reunion: rather, fascism is itself the metaphor for something else. For what, you ask? For a kind of oppression that dominates Pink's development -- the ultimate oppression of his own mind in the gaining light of his adult life. Yes, Syd Barrett (on whom Pink is loosely based) suffered horribly from schizophrenia exacerbated by his drug and alcohol use, and his mental descent figured heavily into his exit from the band.
And if there's any doubt that this is the dominant metaphor of the film, you need only mark upon the counter-life wherein Pink is himself the fascist -- or the point in the animation where Original Pink stands trial after being "caught red-handed showing feelings / showing feelings of an almost human nature." Or what about the one very prominent oppression image that doesn't fit into the war paradigm -- the one in which man is, quite literally, a delicate rose, consumed by a vicious labial flower and soon after carried off in that same flower-turned-dragon's mouth into the wastelands of Wall-world? Yeah... unless I missed some memo wherein women as a whole joined up with other fascist elements of society, adult relationships are just another oppressive aspect of Syd's troubled state of being.
Which brings me full circle: Despite the regular, fetal/childlike representation of Pink, the "delicate rose" metaphor of his adult relationships (his aversion to sex from either groupies or his girlfriend), and the not-so-subtle suggestion that this emasculation springs in part from the lack of a father figure, the film carries Pink as a fragile male in a very strong, counterbalanced way (the surfeit of war imagery certainly doesn't hurt!). This is so masterfully carried off, in fact, that as you near the end of the film (hopefully with a deeper understanding of Pink Floyd's lyrics and the overall resonance of the album, The Wall) it's hard not to feel a little beaten down by the titular wall yourself, and with it all the things that just plain suck in life.
... Which is probably why a lot of people grasp at the ending of this film as a straw of hope. Okay, fine. Take the reprieve, if that's what you need. Let the images wash over you and be done with it. Just... try not to think too hard about what's about to happen to all those bricks from the wall.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING AIDS: Your full attention, and a healthy propensity towards experiencing "human feelings".
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