Pink Floyd - The Wall

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Pink Floyd - The Wall
Original title Pink Floyd - The Wall
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1982
length 95 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Alan Parker
script Roger Waters
production Alan Marshall
Garth Thomas
Gerald Scarfe
music Pink Floyd
Michael Kamen
Bob Ezrin
camera Peter Biziou
cut Gerry Hambling
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii

Successor  →
The Final Cut

Pink Floyd - The Wall is the film adaptation of the concept album The Wall by Pink Floyd and was filmed in 1982 by Alan Parker with Bob Geldof in the lead role.

The film tells the story of the rock musician Pink, who mentally deals with his own situation. The film does not follow any stringent plot, rather it allows memories, ideas, fears and dreams of the protagonist either to pass in review or to be made visible in the form of comic strips , shorter scenes, films and video clips . The film is accompanied by the music of Pink Floyd, who is responsible for the basic idea, the text and the music.

action

Pink, the protagonist of The Wall , is a musician in a rock band, lives alternately in caravans or hotel rooms in Los Angeles , and indulges his thoughts. The relationship to his father, who was killed in an air raid in World War II , as well as the relationship to his mother, which is set in scene with exaggerated care, is illuminated . His marriage threatens to break up, as his wife falls in love with someone else and sleeps with him. Associative image cuts create a relationship with the mother on the one hand and the wife on the other. Pink seems to be lonely, he consumes drugs and is prescribed tranquilizers by his doctor, which above all help Pink to be able to go on and get through the performances with the band. As a result, he fantasizes about a dictatorial ruler based on the National Socialist model and finally finds himself as a defendant in a world court in which the entire staff of his memory reappears, as a kind of flashback of life. After the various caregivers (mother, teacher, wife) appear as witnesses for the prosecution, the presiding judge pronounces the verdict: The wall that Pink has built around herself is blown up and thus torn down.

Pink Floyd Their Mortal Remains - 2017-10-13 - Andy Mabbett - 57 (cropped) .jpg

The motif of the wall appears again and again as a symbol of isolation, isolation and being locked up. It is also intended to highlight the lack of social contact. The wall in the head finally leads to madness, to the clinical case for the mental hospital, a case for the psychiatrist. In the end, it leads to Pink's absolute refusal to speak. In short sequences, childhood memories appear again and again, in them people from his life appear, the teacher in Another Brick in the Wall , Part Two , the doctor in Mother and Comfortably Numb , the mother and the wife in Mother . There is a discrepancy between the unaffectedness, the peace, the quiet of childhood memories, and the overwhelming power of the adult world, whereby the adults appear primarily as parents, educators (teachers), doctors or lovers and / or authorities who then function as caregivers . With childhood listening, one follows the statement of the film, a peaceful, sheltered, pleasant, perhaps just life.

background

The main character Pink has traits of Syd Barrett , a founding member of Pink Floyd, to whom many of the band's lyrics refer. However, most references to reality, such as the father's death in war or the overprotective mother, including the break-up marriage, can be traced back to the (at that time) very authoritarian bassist Roger Waters. Many sources later claimed that Waters only used the band to use "The Wall" (album) to describe his own perspective on life. However, this cannot be fully proven, because, according to some fans of the band, Pink even bears traits of the pianist Richard Wright. "Pink Floyd" was not ultimately the executive producer on the film, although the idea, music and some creative input came from them.

Reviews

“Brightly monstrous illustrations for the rock oratorio of the same name by the English pop group Pink Floyd : A rock musician goes through stages of his dreary childhood, his failed private life and his steep career in a hotel room in Los Angeles. The visionary fragments of his delirium form a wall that encloses him in a complete inability to communicate. Designed for visual and acoustic overstimulation and overloaded with half-baked symbolisms, the confused film impresses solely through the consistent combination of music and images in the style of modern video clip aesthetics. "

- Lexicon of International Films

"Reality and fantasy continue to mix into one another: [...] A symbolic conclusion [...] releases the viewer, overwhelmed or overwhelmed, depending on their capacity, from a flood of surreal sequences [...] Alan Parker practices overloading the senses in a perfection, against whom Ken Russell looks like a third degree adept. The cuts follow one another rapidly, the dialogue is kept to a minimum, the songs speak for themselves. Technically, too, the film uses the resources of the cinema to the highest degree, it is almost a must to see The Wall in the 70 mm Dolby version . The actors come off quite well in the cacophony of light: Bob Geldof, for example, the lead singer of the Boomtown Rats , draws from his own experience and makes Pink a disturbing figure. [...] The Wall is also a film that bursts like a shimmering soap bubble when dissected with the critic's knife; which is either accepted as an extravagant audio-visual trip or rejected as a senseless and insulting mish-mash. Film adaptation of the Pink Floyd LP of the same name: A rock musician on the verge of madness drifts in the hallucinations of his fears, longings and memories and finally overcomes them. The built protective wall collapses. A technically brilliant cacophony of light and sound overwhelms the viewer and robs them of any possibility of processing what they have seen. In this way, the film skilfully conceals its lack of real relevance, it is better not to attempt an analysis in retrospect. "

- Norbert Stresau : The film year '82 / '83

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Christina Rietz: Syd Barrett - The lost soul of Pink Floyd. In: Zeit Online. June 11, 2011, accessed May 5, 2014 .
  2. Horst Peter Koll u. a. (Ed.): Lexicon of International Films . Band TU. Hamburg 1995, p. 5632.
  3. In Lothar Just (ed.): Das Filmjahr '82 / '83 . Munich 1983, p. 275.