THE WALL (THE MOVIE)

There are two movies that surely inspired Parker, Scarfe and Waters and they are "Privilege" whose final scene is almost identical to "The Trial" and of course "Tommy" with its aircrafts and bleeding crosses.

The idea was probably already in the original concept as The Trial is painted on the internal sleeve of the original album.

It's a movie full of references to facts of Pink Floyd's story: Comfortably Numb reminds to when Waters had a problem with his liver before a gig and went on stage totally numb because of medicines. In The Flesh, when Geldof cuts himself with the razor and the cigarette burning his fingers on Nobody Home are true episodes of Syd Barrett's life.

Tis means that in the end Pink is not Barrett or Waters, it's a synthesys of them both. The choice of calling him Pink Floyd comes from the early 70s, when after the success of The Dark Side of the Moon, and in particular of Money, a manager asked the band "Who of you is Pink?" This episode is also mentioned in Animals.

The movie is logically split in two parts. First the childhood, the war, the death of his father that are what the two Rogers (Waters and Barrett) had in common, so also in this case we can't assume that it's only about Waters' ghosts. There are touching moments well underlined by the music, only I don't like how the "additional" songs have been placed between "Empty Spaces" and "Young Lust", for example or the interruptions on Mother. They are really better on the album.

Also Young Lust is a reference to the groupies and it's a theme that Wright explored on "Summer 68", just to say that the story is not about Waters' only.

Some images are very strong, quite disturbing and the movie is not easy to follow and to be appreciated without knowing already the album and some of the facts behind. Even if war seems to be the dominant concept, all the darkness of the 70s Floyd's production is summarized in this movie, since Dark Side of The Moon, passing by Wish You Were Here and Animals to complete a reflection started with an apparently easy song like "Free Four".

Not a masterpiece of Cinema, but surely a masterpiece for music and concept, that's what this site is about.