Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982)

Directed by Alan Parker. Starring Bob Geldof, Kevin McKeon, Christine Hargreaves, Alex McAvoy, Eleanor David, Bob Hoskins, James Laurenson, Jenny Wright. [R]

Pioneering progressive rock band Pink Floyd’s 1979 conceptual double album masterpiece, The Wall, becomes a conceptual “feature-length metaphor” on celluloid. With its heavily-symbolic and nearly dialogue-free action set to a nearly non-stop reel of Pink Floyd music, it’s a surreal tone poem more than a narrative film, and that tone is relentlessly oppressive and despairing. Geldof is an isolated, miserable, and quite possibly mad rock star in deterioration, and his troubled mindset and memories serve as the psychological scenarist. At it’s best, a striking and provocative marriage of music, image, and theme; at it’s worst, a reminder of why music videos rarely go very far past the length of a single song. High points—if a movie this depressing can be said to contain “high points”—are almost always set to the most exciting portions of the music (“Young Lust,” “The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2,” “Run Like Hell”) depicting events and fantasies such as a fascist rally, the destruction of a hotel room, schoolboy punishment, psychedelic animation sequences, and more. Some viewers will find it a galvanizing experience—there’s a significant cult following, mostly from die-hard fans of the band—but it’s harrowing and dramatically erratic enough to almost become a challenge to experience in a single sitting, so it will test the patience and temperament of others. Try to spot Joanne Whalley as a groupie.

63/100