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Directed by: Alan Parker Starring: Bob Geldof, Bob Hoskins This is sort of a tough film to review. Based as it is on Pink Floyd's best-selling album The Wall, it's almost easier to think of it as the world's longest music video than as a film with a coherent narrative structure or plot. But it does have a plot, and includes a lot of deeply moving meditations on war, society, and and human emotions. If you haven't heard the album already, it may be somehat difficult to get what's going on, but if you have, this will add a new dimension to the often fairly oblique and mysterious refernces. It's about a rock star (cleverly named Pink Floyd), who is basically telling the life story of the real Pink Floyd's bass player, Roger Waters. Drawing on Waters' real life experience with losing his father during World War II, suffering at the hands of abusive teachers in school, and with the pressures and unpleasantness of being a rock star, the film also takes a look at the nature of what it means to be famous, and how people protect themselves from hurt and pain by withdrawing from the world. The movie follows the album almost exactly, adding in the song When the Tigers Broke Free, extending Empty Spaces, and dropping Hey You. Most songs are played behind Boomtown Rats member Bob Geldof acting as Pink, but some, like Goodbye Blue Sky and The Trial, receive startlingly weird animated footage drawn by Gerald Scarfe. It is an extremely faithful reproduction of the music and the stage shows, completing Roger Waters' vision of the music as a sort of tryptych: movie, album, and show. While this film can be depressing, bitter, and a little overwhelming to watch, it really gives a lot of life to the excellent music that the band recorded shortly before Waters left the band due to creative differences. This is Pink Floyd at its most grandiose, pretentious, and touching, all at the same time. The song Comfortably Numb, my personal favorite on the album, is almost overwhelming, and the fantastic expenditure of $10 million (quite a lot at the time) really shows in the extravagant attention to detail and realism, such as the actual skinheads that direction Alan Parker hired for the In the Flesh and Waiting For the Worms scenes. One of my personal favorite movies, and definitely the peak of the rock opera trend in the Seventies, beating even The Who's Tommy. A must-see for the Pink Floyd fan, but recommended for anyone who likes to see talented musicians try to tackle some larger themes in a big way. RATING: 5.0 PROS: Fantastic music, inspired direction, great animation CONS: Very depressing, a little disjointed ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084503/
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Aug 2, 2004 00:16
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 22:24 |
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I thoroughly enjoyed this film. I'm a bit biased since I'm a great admirer of the work that Pink Floyd has done over the years, they are arguably my favorite musicians of all time. The cinematography, however, I thought was very good and I thought this film was done very well. The music fit well with the mood of each scene and you can tell a lot of work and thought was put into this movie. It also gave greater insight into the lives of the band members than the music alone. Just a musical film so it will not get my highest rating, however a very good one. 4.5/5
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Aug 2, 2004 02:36
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The only thing that makes The Wall any good for me is the actual music. I used to think the movie was pretty badass, but now I'd say it's not so good. I guess it's a good way to get people interested in Pink Floyd. I guess I'm just saying that I'll take the album over the movie anyday.
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Aug 3, 2004 23:45
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It's very good, but very experimental. This means that a lot of people won't like it, and there are sections that could have been done better. Overall, I enjoyed it a great deal. It's much better if you're stoned. It will be crystal clear if you're tripping.
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Aug 4, 2004 23:06
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I suppose if you're into Pinky Floyd, then you'll enjoy this one. Me, I can't stand Pink Floyd because I think their music alternates back and forth between boring me to tears and then scaring the hell out of me with random sounds of clocks and people screaming and voices telling me I'm going to die. If you agree with any of this, don't see the movie, and DEFINITELY don't see the movie stoned, you'll probably cry and huddle into a little ball. 0.5/5
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Sep 12, 2004 17:30
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This is one of those movies that the cool kids talked about forever in 7th grade though none of them probably ever saw it. When I finally did see it, I was hellaciously bored/confused. It's just one of those movies that exactly equates with the date and time when it was created. Cycle forward a few years and it's out of date. Perhaps going along with that, being on drugs might help. There's some songs on the albums I really dig. And at the time their effects were pretty cool. But they get dated. The movie is experimental, you could say. And just like taking acid every morning was an experiment that didn't last, I feel this movie is the same way. It's hard to rate the movie. I'd give it a 1-2 now, but I know at the time it was more of an accomplishment. So I'll just stay with a 2 I guess.
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Sep 13, 2004 04:29
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One of my favorite things about this film is how far it draws you into Pink's mind using the soundtrack, flashbacks to key points in his life, and how the images are warped and distorted, eventually into cartoonish forms, as the character withdraws from reality. The movie starts as the album does, with Pink Floyd, famous rocker, locked in his hotel room in the middle of a psychotic break. Through his shattered perspective he tries to trace the path of his life through disorganized memories while he continues to sink into madness. It's not experimental in any way, shape, or form, and I think that anyone who would describe it as such is either using the term very loosely or doesn't know that experimental film is a specific kind of genre. An example of an experimental film is "Passage à l'acte," which is the breakfast scene from "To Kill a Mockingbird" edited to do things like play Atticus's slight hand movement over and over, then cut to another character speaking, mid-word, and move the order of the sentence around to form incomprehensible gibberish. Experimental film does not have plot, it's an exercise in using only technique to demonstrate ideas. The Wall is, however, unique because of its use of conventional methods to tell Pink's story in an unconventional way. Dialogue does not progress the narrative, you understand what's going on through the images and the soundtrack. The flashbacks only needs to show Pink's antics on a playground to show how desperately he was to fill the hole left by his father's death. Pink's hallucinations and mental state are presented in a variety of symbols and some amazing sequences animated by Gerald Scarfe, who brought some iconic and psychotic attributes with his style. A flying dove will shred in mass of blood to reveal a black hawk in a hallucination on the theme of WW2. When he thinks of his wife, who had an affair, we see flowers imitate sex before morphing into vicious creatures that tear at eachothers' throats. It's not very high concept, but it is effective. My only criticisms of the movie are that it doesn't capture as much of the humor of the music and that it can be too literal for its own good sometimes. As a musical, there are too many places where you'll hear a lyric while it's being acted out exactly. While there are situations where this works, like when Pink tears up his hotel room in a rage during "One of My Turns," there are sometimes where an animated character will mention a hammer and suddenly turn into a hammer, I guess because they couldn't think of anything more to do. Since it draws so much of its strength of showing instead of telling, these moments are darker spots on the movie than they would be on any other musical. The purpose of turning The Wall is to explore themes in the vein of the lyrics instead of acting them out, like when "Mother" plays and we see his Mother sleeping in bed with his father's corpse. Since the song demonstrates how overbearing his mother was we don't need much to illustrate that point, but a visual representation of how his mother hasn't moved on is a well done expansion of the original material. Essentially, it's said that you're not supposed to hear music as much as you're supposed to feel it, and on that standard I think the movie adaptation of The Wall is a triumph. When Pink imagined his wife cheating on him I felt devastated, when he slipped into a catatonic state I felt numb, and when he goes into a rage and starts destroying his hotel room I felt like I could have been doing it. Unlike a majority of Floyd's fans, I never had to be high for that effect. Technical - 4.5 Personal - 5 Total - 5/5 (rounded) Knight fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Sep 18, 2004 |
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Sep 13, 2004 08:47
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I truly sympathize with anyone not familiar with Pink Floyd who tries to watch this movie. This is not to say I don't like it. I, in fact, love this film, and it is by far one of my favourite motion pictures of all time. I have seen it and enjoyed it immensely both ridiculously stoned and cold sober, before a time when I had even tried drugs of any sort. I just don't know how well this film stands on its own, outside Pink Floyd fandom. The main reason I am of this opinion that it is sometimes difficult to reconcile Roger Waters, the multi-talented and resourceful Pink Floyd bassist, and Roger Waters, the narcissistic crybaby. Both are equal parts of his personality, and both will always interplay and influence the other's output. If you're not familiar with the Pink Floyd canon, I think that it's possible to examine the content of the Wall, and see it as a moody piece of burned-out hippie claptrap. It really depends on whether or not you feel it worth it to emphasize with Pink (Roger). Because if you don't, I can see very little potential for viewing this film. Long story short: If you think Roger Waters and all other navel-gazing, gloom and doom British rockers (of which there are many) have absolutely zero to say about the human condition, and are at best solipsitic intellectual retards, do not watch this film. If you have ever, even for a second, listened to 'Wish You Were Here' and felt the general haunting melancholly of Roger Water's best stuff, I would watch it. Me, I fall into the latter camp. I get misty eyed every time I hear 'Vera'.
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Sep 14, 2004 11:48
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Tells an interesting story. I like a lot of the songs from The Wall as well. The movie seems a bit long but overall, I think it was a good piece of work. I can see how a lot of people just don't have the interest to pay attention to the story told and find it boring though. 3.5/5
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Sep 16, 2004 16:34
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 22:24 |
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One of the things that upsets a lot of people is that the film comes in long sequences, not short scenes. So there is a long live-action sequence, followed by a long animated sequence, followed by a long flashback sequence, etc. It is not a linear, cohesive plot. This may bother some people as well. It will wander into an area for a little while and then wander into another area, and then it will stop focusing on the story altogether and muse on the concept of war or motherhood. Visually, I find the movie very appealing, more so than musically. The intro sequence is pretty heavy even if you're not stoned. If you are stoned (or on any hallucinogen) the intro sequence will probably scare you really badly. The subject matter is the mental health of a traumatized person. If you don't find that in any way interesting, DO NOT WATCH. I wouldn't want anyone coming back to me saying "Dude that movie sucked, it was too depressing." Rated 4.0 - A very well-photographed and well-edited film which I have a great fondness for, but is almost completely lacking in cheer and some of the music may seem a little old-fashioned to most 20-something people.
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Sep 17, 2004 22:32
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