Pink Floyd – The Wall was the movie by the then 38-year-old British director Alan Parker. Both positive and negative feedbacks can be heard about this movie. Misunderstanding of this movie is connected with understanding it as a too long video clip or a filmed concert of the Pink Floyd rock band which illustrated the songs through animation. It can be assumed that peculiar style met the resistance of people who were accustomed only to the linear plot and intelligible ideas shown in movies they watched. This Parker`s film, on the contrary, virtually lacks not only dialogues of the characters, but also a connected story.
Rock star Pink, sitting in a hotel room in Los Angeles, is in a state of emotional crisis – irregular visions and memories dominate in his brain. This story idea belonged to Roger Waters, the former leader of the Pink Floyd band. This idea allowed him, director Alan Parker and animator Gerald Scarfe to create a whimsical fantasy based on the famous rock album The Wall, which is metaphorical and associative talk about the suppression of the individual by society and various government institutions that create insurmountable barriers to independent human individuality.
This movie is a kind of parabola about the fate of the generation born during and after the war, the generation that suffered the fatherless, the cruelty of the school system, the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality. In the 1960-ies, representatives of this generation rebelled against all principles, they expressed their rejection of that society in a quite controversial and flamboyant way: they alienated themselves from the society through escaping from reality and diving into the world of their own desires and passions (Angle, 2013).
But the chaos of individualism, according to the authors of the movie, can become, in the meantime, a fertile ground for even stronger totalitarian regime, which creates new walls around an individual and brings him into another "stone cage". The key idea of the movie – is to show that it is a high time to break these “walls” that the society and people themselves create by escaping reality.
Themes of Pink Floyd album The Wall largely influenced this movie. This movie was shot long before the abundance of computer effects – animator Gerald Scarfe created animated pictures so subtly conveying everything that had been invented by Waters, leader of Pink Floy, and showed by Parker, the director of the movie. This movie brings about concepts from the album by showing surrealistic marching hammers, children falling into a meat grinder and other unexplained phenomena of children's mind. Such a peculiar stylistic form of the movie, in its turn, influences a viewer.
Pink Floyd – The Wall influenced people, made them think about the problems raised in it. The most important idea, which is a key concept of the movie, is an understanding of a person's identity. And this movie reveals it in the very best way. When watching it, a viewer gets fully immersed in the consciousness of Pink – a main character of the movie. In the movie, we observe everything that is happening in his head, walk with him through the maze of his mind and dive into it with him.
When discussing a cultural context of the movie, it shall be noted that this film can impress even a person indifferent to Pink Floyd songs. However, only those who are closely familiar with the biography of the music band`s members can fully catch the essence of the plot. The story is a reflection of lives of two members of this musical band. One of them is Syd Barrett who had been expelled from the band. The second is the author of the album and the story – Roger Waters. This complex character consists of biographies of these two people (Angle, 2013). Because of this, the plot of the film may seem to some unknown and unsaid.
One of the main ideas of the film is the problem of an individual and his inner world and fears. There is a wall around us that is to be broken by ourselves. The story of Pink Floyd carries a very interesting moral: when a person isolates himself from his problems, he builds a protective wall around him, brick by brick, and, thus, becomes alone – there appears only a huge brick wall around him. But sooner or later it will be necessary to destroy it.
Special nature of this film is given by incredible animated inserts. Through the cartoons we further understand the meaning of the wall, and how it changes people who are caught in its environment. A flower which is turning into a barbed wire, or a child with a rattle who is turning into a fascist Every animation in the movie leaves its mark in viewer`s mind, and sharpens his mind on this (Angle, 2013).
An important point that is worth noting in terms of cultural context is that most actors who performed in the film were amateurs. The author of the plot was a band`s bass player. Bob Geldof, vocalist of the band The Boomtown Rats, played a leading role. The animation was drawn by a man who devoted his life to the political caricature; and The Wall was his first experience in animation (Ebert, 2010). Nevertheless, all of them performed their roles absolutely great!
In my opinion, this film is very relevant. It raises urgent questions of our modern life. The main issue is the identity of the main character. Nobody could see his personality – neither his mother nor his wife, nor teachers. With the help of allusions the director showed difficulties and problems of the then society which have not lost their relevance up to this day. For example, one can agree that the current system of education, for the most part, destroys the individuality of each person, causes him to think like others, and most often not to express thoughts, but simply to agree with the teacher. It is difficult not to agree with the authors of the movie.
Pink Floyd – The Wall is a movie, which has extraordinary momentum which is so hardly perceived and understood by people (Ebert, 2010). It is a bright, insightful and incredibly convincing movie. It has a deep philosophical meaning, provokes much reasoning, analysis and discussions. It draws many conclusions, rather than simply entertain. I would say that this is a movie for everyone, because it is a film about each of us. Lastly, it needs to be mentioned that everyone who watches this masterpiece, regardless of whether he likes it or not, definitely reflects at least briefly what is happening in his own soul.
Works Cited
Angle, B. “Roger Waters Explains the Imagery and Symbolism Behind The Wall Live, His Update of the Pink Floyd Classic”. guitarworld.com. 6 Nov. 2013. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.
Ebert, R. “Pink Floyd: The Wall”. rogerebert.com. 24 Feb. 2010. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.
