Pink Floyd - The Wall

This isn't the most fun to listen to and some viewers don't find it to much fun to watch, but the 1982 film is without question the best of all serious fiction films devoted to rock.

It's a pretty grim portrait, but even worse it is often repetitive and boring. There are probably enough powerful segments for half a dozen or so outstanding rock videos but not a full-length feature.

The film is explosively wild, raw, primitive, sometimes inarticulate. It is also totally theatrical and compelling. It's film as primal scream; seething with anger, alienation and despair.

Parker's visual synthesis with the music, much aided by Scarfe's rip-roaring visions of doom and destruction which turn light into darkness at the flick of a pen rather than a switch, is almost perfect.

"Do you think they'll drop the Bomb?" asks a loaded musical question at one irresistibly funny point. Obviously, they've already dropped it, and it's called "The Wall."

The scenes of violence are marvelously put together. It is hard to realize that we are watching fiction... However, although The Wall is horrifying, it is not lurid; we are never allowed to derive from this film any satisfaction for our kinkiness.

Not for everyone.

What is the price of fame and is it vicariously experienced in concert with the successful or is it in the foundational underpinnings of a life lived in turmoil. Pink Floyd The Wall attempts to examine this unusual notion in cinematic form.

As all operas should be, the film is high drama and folds in trippy animation, war flashbacks, gory sequences, and giants sets to tell its tale.