Perhaps I'd better start with why I have trouble getting into this one. Basically, the thing about The Wall is that, whilst the story of a person's alienation and depression leads to them doing the thing that's guaranteed to make it worse i.e. "Walling" themselves off from humanity, is a powerful one with a good understanding of the issues in question, it's the fact that it's autobiographical to Roger Waters that's my sticking point. Frankly, I have a very low tolerance for stories of "ooh, isn't being rich, successful, and highly influential terrible?". Yes, becoming rich doesn't just magic away issues of mental health for yourself, but at the same time, you shouldn't portray it as being in and of itself some sort of curse. Also, whilst I get some of the point of the fascist imagery later on, with the character seeing himself as effectively becoming the sort of demagogue that his father died to bring down, it goes rather too far down that route, it's really uncomfortable to watch, with so many real racial slurs being used. Plus, the fact that some actual far right groups took notes from this section bugs me too. The reasons for the character of Pink building The Wall do also read a bit like Roger Waters' own soapbox; yes, there was a lot that was wrong about the British school system back in the day, but dude, Roger, your mum was trying to do her best, don't demonise her! Finally, this one is a bit of mess to be frank, there are moments where trying to follow the album tracks leads to some slightly inelegant edits, though this could be down to Waters, Parker, and cartoonist Gerald Scarfe butting heads all through the project. Right, that last point was extra-nitpicky, even for me, so I guess I'll talk about reasons to like it.
As I said, I have issues with some autobiographical points of the story, I will also say that the whole thing does earn some points for showing more introspection than quite a few creators do with their own life and work. Let's face it, it's not every musician that's ready to make a whole rock opera with a question of "am I just kind of a bad person?". Come to think of it, with that fascism thing, it kind of is the "are we the baddies?" sketch written large. Also, as I hinted above, it does make for a good allegory of depression, of the vicious spiral it can become, where succumbing to it brings out behaviours that can only exacerbate it. All of this is visualised brilliantly, with some incredible set pieces, photographed wonderfully, from the more music-video-esque segments like the school fantasy to Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), to the WWII Battles set to In the Flesh?. Oh, and needless to say, the music is fantastic, with the odd reorchestration of the album, and a few extra songs, working wonderfully. Not sure why they lost Hey You though. Also, for a film with little real dialogue, great acting too, from Bob Geldof being an oddly hypnotic presence and a scarily plausible fascist, to Bob Hoskins getting the best line in the whole thing (first thing he says in this clip!).
So yeah, it's one I have a lot of trouble connecting with, I do need to give it a rewatch some time soon, although maybe I'll wait until there's another big screen showing to get the full effect. It's a mixed bag, where sometimes what works about it overrides my niggles with the story, sometimes they don't, it's all a question of mood I guess. I did first see it as a moody student, so it certainly connected with me then, but as I get older, maybe I've "mellowed away" from it? Not sure, I guess next chance I give it maybe I will have a more definite opinion... or probably not, and it's going to be bugging me until even the damn afterlife finally packs it in and calls it a day!
BTW, if you're wondering why I did this one today, two reasons. Firstly, Bob Geldof has something to do with another little project of mine I'll be posting about on here in the next couple of days. Secondly, because I know full well that, even if I've fallen prey to Dunning-Kruger and this article is damn near unreadable trash, it would still be a better take on The Wall than what Doug Walker did with it...
2 comments:
I'm kind of like that with the album - I enjoy long sections of it but find the entire thing to be kind of a bridge too far, not least because I think the band did a lot of its best ideas elsewhere.
Wish You Were Here did the rock star isolation and Syd Barrett references far better, Animals was a better confrontation of the nastier side of times to come, The Final Cut a better assault on Thatcherism (benefitting from having seen the beast in action) and a better rumination on whether the sacrifices of the World War II generation had been betrayed, etc.
The Wall doesn't bring much to the table beyond Waters' autobiographical stuff, and even then he kind of chickens out of it by making Pink this sort of amalgam of him and Syd Barrett. I feel like this is kind of a cop-out - if you're doing an autobiographical story about tearing down your emotional walls and exposing your feelings and thoughts to the world, including confessing to the nastier ones, you completely sabotage that if you fudge it so that the main character isn't really you. (Then again "I led a neo-fascist movement" is a more exciting plot turn than "I got really alloyed at a fan and spat on them at one point on the Animals tour".) Also, STOP GOING BACK TO THE SYD WELL; the man made it very clear that he wanted to be left alone, the more you keep harping on about him the more you guarantee that fans will seek him out and bother him.
Re: Doug Walker: maybe this is a generational thing but I never really got into his schtick. He was part of that Angry Video Game Nerd wave of reviewers who thought it'd be a good idea to include a plot and storylines weaving through their reviews, which I never thought added anything except padding out time and making the whole endeavour cringey and opening them up to the cop-out excuse of "Well, my movie was bad, but your sketch shows you can't do better."
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