The film cuts back and forth between the adulthood and childhood of Pink. The flashbacks of his childhood help us to understand various aspects of Pink's personality. We learn from the scenes of his childhood that Pink's father was killed during World War II and that results in Pink's desire for a father figure. When Pink goes to school, he is humiliated by his teacher and peers for writing poems.
In the scenes depicting Pink's adulthood, we see him eventually get married, but he and his wife grow apart possibly because of his seeming indifference to his wife. After Pink learns of his wife's affair with another man, he absorbs himself in expensive materialistic possessions and gradually alienates himself from the outside world, which is graphically represented by the construction of a wall. Pink's manager and some paramedics finally discover Pink unconsciously lying in his hotel room, and in order to have Pink perform on the stage, they inject him with drugs . The drugs cause Pink to recall his memory of his childhood and to fantasize about being a neo-Nazi dictator. The hallucination ends with Pink screaming “Stop!” In the following animated sequence, Pink is put on trial and the judge orders the wall to be torn down.The movie then comes to an end with the explosion of the wall accompanied by the montage of events from the entire film. There is little dialogue in the film. Songs from the album The Wall is the major source of sound. In addition, the film contains fifteen animated sequences that metaphorically present Pink's inner struggle over several different issues. The sound and the images on the screen, as a whole, give the audience a general picture of Pink's psychological condition.as a whole, give the audience a general picture of Pink's psychological condition.as a whole, give the audience a general picture of Pink's psychological condition.
As the name of the film suggests, the wall is obviously a crucial element and motif in this film. It is first brought up as a part of the lyrics of the song “Another Brick in the Wall” when the director, Alan Parker, visualizes the scene where students on a conveyer belt are fed into blades which extrude them as ground meat. The concept of the wall comes back several times as an identifier in the development of the film. The idea of building it also comes from lyrics, which belong to the song “Mother.” And after Pink learns of his wife's affair, the film visually represents the construction of wall in an animated sequence where the growing wall crushes everything in its way. The animation here makes the visual construction of the wall more dramatic .
Until this point, it is safe to say that the mental wall has been built, thus the following scene in which Pink brings back a groupie to his hotel room depicts Pink's situation inside the wall. After letting the groupie get into his room, Pink just sits on the chair and starts watching television without saying anything. The girl seems lost in such awkward silence. At one point, the dialogue from the TV goes, “So here we are all together for the first time, you're wondering what it's all about and I can't tell you because I don't know myself. But I do know it's a big thing." It would fit perfectly if it is Pink who says it. It suggests that Pink does not know about himself and he lets the television express this feeling for him. His presence as an adult is often presented as him aimlessly watching television.TV separates Pink from the real world around him, which lends itself to one of the bricks on the wall. By having the television speak for him, Pink becomes more alienated from the outside. But his later singing “I've got thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from” reveals his disgust at it. If he really likes to stay isolated, why would he hate the thing which prevents him from being exposed to the outside?
A sense of self-hatred can also be implied from this scene. It is remarkable that when Pink is trashing the room afterwards, he, consciously or unconsciously, destroys every reflecting surface in the hotel room: the glass table, the mirrors, the frames of paintings, the bottles and finally, the windows. He clearly does not want to see himself anymore. All those reflecting surfaces remind him of the existence of the wall by letting Pink see himself as an isolated unit which he hates to become. We can trace this feeling in previous scenes where Pink tries to hold the arm of somebody else's father and where he wanders in the train station in order to find his father even though he knows his father has already been killed in the war.The same feeling is brought up again later in his memories of his boyhood in which Pink tries but fails to save an ill rat. The song “Bring the Boys Back Home” is the background music of the scene in which young Pink is wandering in the train station. This song is a hymn-like chant that Roger Waters calls “the central song on the whole album.” Both the soldiers on the battle field and those who have just come back to their country are singing the song while Pink, occupying his own island of isolation among the crowd, does not utter a single word. He tries to reach someone but it turns out to prove that he is alone in the world. Ironically, soldiers, probably the most stylized “Boys”, reunite with their families, but Pink, is there all alone. So since he was a child,the lack of feeling of connection and a desire for it have both been rooted in Pink's personality. He, at the moment, realizes the impossibility of achieving such connection while inside the wall. As a result, he actively attempts to break it. Since the groupie comes from the outside, she is potentially the mere connection between Pink and the world. So on an unconscious level, Pink never throws things directly onto her though he seems to just narrowly miss her. This action could be possibly interpreted as his will to keep himself linked to the world. The climax of the scene comes when Pink tears down the blinds and breaks the windows by throwing out the television. But his attempt to reconnect himself with the outside world soon proves in vain. There is a sharp contrast between his mad screaming and the silence of the world.The explosion of the television and his outburst in the room do not cause any difference to the world. Instead, the following shot shows the cars on the street are still passing by him in a hurry and the whole city remains silent just as it always has been. The only sound in this shot is just the echoes of his voice. This is the world's cold reply to Pink. He is just talking to himself. Interestingly enough, the song goes to “Would you like to call the cops? Do you think it's time I stopped?" when the television breaks through the window. Pink tries to enrage the world by yelling or even swearing at it, but the result stays the same — No one cares.the following shot shows the cars on the street are still passing by him in a hurry and the whole city remains silent just as it always has been. The only sound in this shot is just the echoes of his voice. This is the world's cold reply to Pink. He is just talking to himself. Interestingly enough, the song goes to “Would you like to call the cops? Do you think it's time I stopped?” when the television breaks through the window. Pink tries to enrage the world by yelling or even swearing at it, but the result stays the same — No one cares.the following shot shows the cars on the street are still passing by him in a hurry and the whole city remains silent just as it always has been. The only sound in this shot is just the echoes of his voice. This is the world's cold reply to Pink. He is just talking to himself. Interestingly enough, the song goes to “Would you like to call the cops? Do you think it's time I stopped?” when the television breaks through the window. Pink tries to enrage the world by yelling or even swearing at it, but the result stays the same — No one cares.the song goes to “Would you like to call the cops? Do you think it's time I stopped?” when the television breaks through the window. Pink tries to enrage the world by yelling or even swearing at it, but the result stays the same - No one cares.the song goes to “Would you like to call the cops? Do you think it's time I stopped?” when the television breaks through the window. Pink tries to enrage the world by yelling or even swearing at it, but the result stays the same - No one cares.
Since it was Roger Waters, the vocalist and bassist for Pink Floyd, who wrote the screenplay and the film is also widely associated with Waters' personal life experience, we cannot really understand the film without the knowledge of Waters as a historical figure. The death of Pink's father is a reference to that of Waters' father who died in combat in Italy. It is reflected in the movie through Pink's feeling of abandonment, which is included in the elements that push him into the wall. Furthermore, Waters did actually conceive a wall between the audience and himself. At a concert in Montreal, Canada, the wild behavior of a Pink Floyd fan made Waters spit in his face. As the band was heading back to the hotel,Waters started talking about how he sometimes felt like building a wall between himself and the audience This idea is further strengthened by Waters saying “I don't think we'd get through the first half an hour of rehearsals. If I'm going to be on stage playing music with people, I want it to be with people that I love.” We can infer from Waters' words that he turned to the idea of building a wall because he did not feel love between him and the audience, rather than because of his desire to achieve alienation. Waters is put in a passive position in the same way Pink is depicted in the movie. In fact, Pink Floyd did materialize their concept of alienation in reality. In 1971, a movie called Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii was filmed, featuring Pink Floyd performing six songs in the ancient Roman amphitheater in Pompeii, with no audience.The empty seats around the band definitely created a sense of alienation, but the fact that the concert was made into a film shows that the band did want somebody to see it. The paradoxical nature of this film parallels Pink's struggle between disconnection and connection to the world in The Wall. When we put the two films and reality together, we can derive a relationship between the three: the reality caused Waters to conceptualize the ideas in The Wall, and Live at Pompeii serves as the physical realization of the ideas. The discrepancy between the reality and The Wall lies in the degree of alienation. The audience did not understand Waters' music, or did not see it in the way Waters expected them to see, whereas in the film, the world does not understand or even try to understand Pink, which seems to be a bit of exaggeration of the reality.but the fact that the concert was made into a film shows that the band did want somebody to see it. The paradoxical nature of this film parallels Pink's struggle between disconnection and connection to the world in The Wall. When we put the two films and reality together, we can derive a relationship between the three: the reality caused Waters to conceptualize the ideas in The Wall, and Live at Pompeii serves as the physical realization of the ideas. The discrepancy between the reality and The Wall lies in the degree of alienation . The audience did not understand Waters' music, or did not see it in the way Waters expected them to see, whereas in the film, the world does not understand or even try to understand Pink, which seems to be a bit of exaggeration of the reality.but the fact that the concert was made into a film shows that the band did want somebody to see it. The paradoxical nature of this film parallels Pink's struggle between disconnection and connection to the world in The Wall. When we put the two films and reality together, we can derive a relationship between the three: the reality caused Waters to conceptualize the ideas in The Wall, and Live at Pompeii serves as the physical realization of the ideas. The discrepancy between the reality and The Wall lies in the degree of alienation . The audience did not understand Waters' music, or did not see it in the way Waters expected them to see, whereas in the film, the world does not understand or even try to understand Pink, which seems to be a bit of exaggeration of the reality.The paradoxical nature of this film parallels Pink's struggle between disconnection and connection to the world in The Wall. When we put the two films and reality together, we can derive a relationship between the three: the reality caused Waters to conceptualize the ideas in The Wall , and Live at Pompeii serves as the physical realization of the ideas. The discrepancy between the reality and The Wall lies in the degree of alienation. The audience did not understand Waters' music, or did not see it in the way Waters expected them to see, whereas in the film, the world does not understand or even try to understand Pink, which seems to be a bit of exaggeration of the reality.The paradoxical nature of this film parallels Pink's struggle between disconnection and connection to the world in The Wall. When we put the two films and reality together, we can derive a relationship between the three: the reality caused Waters to conceptualize the ideas in The Wall , and Live at Pompeii serves as the physical realization of the ideas. The discrepancy between the reality and The Wall lies in the degree of alienation. The audience did not understand Waters' music, or did not see it in the way Waters expected them to see, whereas in the film, the world does not understand or even try to understand Pink, which seems to be a bit of exaggeration of the reality.we can derive a relationship between the three: the reality caused Waters to conceptualize the ideas in The Wall, and Live at Pompeii serves as the physical realization of the ideas. The discrepancy between the reality and The Wall lies in the degree of alienation. The audience did not understand Waters' music, or did not see it in the way Waters expected them to see, whereas in the film, the world does not understand or even try to understand Pink, which seems to be a bit of exaggeration of the reality .we can derive a relationship between the three: the reality caused Waters to conceptualize the ideas in The Wall, and Live at Pompeii serves as the physical realization of the ideas. The discrepancy between the reality and The Wall lies in the degree of alienation. The audience did not understand Waters' music, or did not see it in the way Waters expected them to see, whereas in the film, the world does not understand or even try to understand Pink, which seems to be a bit of exaggeration of the reality .or did not see it in the way Waters expected them to see, whereas in the film, the world does not understand or even try to understand Pink, which seems to be a bit of exaggeration of the reality.or did not see it in the way Waters expected them to see, whereas in the film, the world does not understand or even try to understand Pink, which seems to be a bit of exaggeration of the reality.
However, world's refusal to understand Pink gives rise to a question: Pink's wife wants to build a connection with Pink early in the film but Pink's indifference drives her away. If Pink really wants to establish a connection with the world, why does he consistently put distance between his wife and him? This question is only valid on the premise that Pink is truly indifferent toward his wife. But is he? The answer is self-evident when the song “Don't Leave Me Now” follows the trashing scene. The film crosscuts between Pink's wife having sex with the other guy and Pink sitting in an empty room watching television, alone. The shadow of his wife walks into the room from the edge of the wall, stops right behind Pink, and then transforms into an animated monster figure that roars at Pink and frightens him into the corner.The sex scene cuts in again and when it dissolves away, the monster is not there anymore, leaving Pink himself in the corner of the room. This is the only scene in the movie in which both real and animated figures appear on the screen at the same time. The image of his wife is apparently Pink's imagination. Her leaving is torturing Pink because he is still in love with her, and by putting him and the giant animated monster together in the same screen, the film enables the audience to see how this love is afflicting, or even devouring Pink.Her leaving is torturing Pink because he is still in love with her, and by putting him and the giant animated monster together in the same screen, the film enables the audience to see how this love is afflicting, or even devouring Pink.Her leaving is torturing Pink because he is still in love with her, and by putting him and the giant animated monster together in the same screen, the film enables the audience to see how this love is afflicting, or even devouring Pink.
When Pink gets over the nightmare of his wife's imaginary transformation, he furiously breaks another television with his guitar. Pink's failure to break the wall leads to his realization that he is absolutely alone in this world and as a result, he continues to build the wall higher and higher. Pink's memory flashes back to other people's alienation toward him and he comes to the conclusion that "I don't need no arms around me. I don't need no drugs to calm me. I've seen the writing on the wall. Don't think I need anything at all. All and all it was all just bricks in the wall. All and all you were all just bricks in the wall.” From the way he comes to this conclusion, we can learn that Pink is passively pushed into the wall. Rather than his own intention, it is others' aloofness that gradually corners him inside the wall.He is now rejecting the world since even his own wife is walking away from him. The rejection traps Pink into a viscous circle: the more the world's aloofness oppresses Pink, the more he isolates himself, and in turn, the isolation further alienates Pink from the world.
Pink, again sitting in his chair, stares at the wall and that is when the song “Goodbye, Cruel World” comes into play. There are tears lingering in his eyes when Pink recalls a piece of his memory of his childhood. Under the orange sky, the young boy Pink runs down a rugby field. The boy's figure becomes clearer and crisper as he runs towards the camera. One notable element in this idyllic shot which rarely happens in the movie is that there are goalposts standing on the far side as background. Pink's running trajectory suggests that he is in fact running away from the goal. In other words, his further construction of the wall diverges from his actual desire for a connection with the world. Such feeling is reinforced by the image in which Pink is no more lying in the chair, rather,he is scratching the wall he just built and putting his ear right beside it trying to hear some sound from outside. The image draws our attention by placing both the immense wall and Pink's tiny figure in the screen. At this very moment, the wall is so high that there is no way out.
There are other approaches to explain Pink's alienation. In the article “Roger Waters' Poetry of the Absent Father”, the author relates the movie to the history of Great Britain:
The new situation forced the British into trying different ways of reinforcing their sense of national identity and continuity with their past that were linked to attempts at retrieving their lost greatness. All these efforts were traversed by contradictions of all kinds that would lead to a socio- economic crisis in the years in which Pink Floyd published The Wall and The Final Cut. Thus, the 'special relationship' with the USA was placed vis-à-vis a reluctant Atlanticism in which the overtones of a family feud could be heard; integration into the European Community was considered a suitable alternative, while at the same time Britain's insularity was safeguarded in more than merely geographical terms;the final acceptance of the loss of Empire was belied by such victorious episodes as the Falklands War in which the glories of an imperial past were revived.
The turmoil of Great Britain at that time is very similar to Pink's psychological dilemma. On one hand, Pink wants to connect himself to the outside world, which is in parallel with Great Britain's desire of integration into the European Community. On the other hand, Pink's attitude of “Don't think I need anything at all,” which is a reflection of Great Britain's unrealistic dream of retrieving the greatness of the Empire, prevents him from breaking through the metaphorical wall. Such parallel between Pink and his country, to Some extent, neutralizes his degree of isolation because it links Pink with the rest of the country. But at the same time, it further explains Pink's painful struggle by relating it to a national concern.
The sense of alienation is again brought under the limelight when Pink fantasizes himself as a neo-Nazi Dictator and the concert as a rally. The audience follows whatever Pink says on the stage even if most of it would be considered inappropriate in that period of time . The film critic, Roger Ebert also relates the image of the dictator with an important historical figure in the British history by saying “I don't believe this dictator is intended as a parallel to any obvious model like Hitler or Stalin; he seems more a fantasy of Britain's own National Socialists led by Oswald Mosley." With the knowledge that Oswald Mosley is known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists, we can more relate the movie to the historical scenario of Great Britain.
Roger Waters' interview by Tommy Vance to some extent helps us interpret this sequence. When Tommy Vance first asked where the idea came from, Roger Waters said:
Well, the idea for 'The Wall' came from ten years of touring, rock shows, I think, particularly the last few years in '75 and in '77 we were playing to very large audiences, some of whom were our old audience who'd come to see us play, but most of whom were only there for the beer, in big stadiums, and, er, consequently it became rather an alienating experience doing the shows. I became very conscious of a wall between us and our audience and so this record started out as being an expression of those feelings.
We can again infer from Waters' response that the reason he wanted to build a wall was that he did not feel the audience's love towards his music in his performance. They attend the concert for the sake of the exciting atmosphere generated by festival seating during the concert. Such attitude towards the singer matches up with the audience's reaction to the speech of the neo-Nazi dictator, who is obviously an incarnation of Pink, as they do not really care what the dictator says; all they do is mimic what he does and repeat what he says. There is not a real emotional connection between the dictator and audience because it is only the message itself that matters, not the person who is delivering the dictation. It is also worth noticing that he refers to himself as a surrogate for Pink.The dictator is not Pink in terms of his clothes because the dictator is just Pink's imaginary figure who does not exist in reality. Moreover, the audience is reacting to the message from the dictator in the same way that fans react to a rock concert, which implies that a dictator can also create the same craziness in the crowd, which Pink, or Waters, might reckon to be a degradation of his music. So in this case, the audience is again alienating Pink and thus pushing him into the restricted area inside the wall.So in this case, the audience is again alienating Pink and thus pushing him into the restricted area inside the wall.So in this case, the audience is again alienating Pink and thus pushing him into the restricted area inside the wall.
Towards the end of the movie, Pink is put on trial and the judge decides that the wall must be torn down. Waters also talks about this sequence in the interview, “at the end of it all, when his judgment on himself is to de -isolate himself, which in fact is a very good thing.” It reinforces the statement that Pink desires for a connection to the world by referring to the destruction of the wall as a very good thing. The film then comes to an end with the peaceful rhythm of “Outside the Wall”.
All alone, or in two's, the ones who really love you, walk up and down outside the wall. Some hand in hand and some gathered together in bands. The bleeding hearts and artists make their stand. And when they've given you their all some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.
This song differs from the rest of the film music in many perspectives. One most noticeable difference is that it explicitly mentions “Walk up and down outside the wall.” The wall is not there anymore, and the message of human connection is delivered to the audience through “Some hand in hand and some gathered together in bands.” We can possibly say that the final scene of the movie is taken from Pink's optical standpoint. The scene fades from white as if Pink tries to get used to the light after the explosion of the wall. Then he sees several kids cleaning up the debris of a riot. It conveys an overall sense of optimism to the audience by having the kids bring order to the chaos. Furthermore, the bleeding hearts and artists possibly mirror Pink, as the character in the movie, or even Pink Floyd, as a band existing in reality.Pink's attempt to break through the wall is again mentioned as “banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.” He leans toward the hopeful message that even though there are personal and social walls standing in the way, one does not have to trap himself into them. Despite the difficulty and the pain of the search for connection, the connection itself is always a good thing. A fade-out then brings the movie to an end.
In the movie, Pink exists as an isolated unit. He builds a mental wall around him to separate himself from the world because the world keeps pushing into him. But at the same time, he also wants to break the wall and form a true connection with the world. The paradoxical nature of Pink's psychological struggle is represented by the attempts of both building and demolishing the wall. Pink's actions can potentially be viewed as Roger Waters' expression of his own ideas toward the issue of alienation and connection because Waters did come up with the concept of a wall between himself and the audience, and Pink Floyd's concert at Pompeii physically realized the isolation. As the film goes toward the end, Pink finally goes outside the wall and smells a sense of connection between himself and the world.The image and the music as a whole build up the story of the film, and the film, in turn, helps the audience to form a better understanding of Pink Floyd and its album The Wall.
View more about Pink Floyd: The Wall reviews
