Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)

Lack of good storyline.

A lot of fun.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I watched "The Wall" again and again. 'Cause it's just explaining my life's emptiness. I just want to live without any religion, any ideology, any race, any relationship... I just want to live with myself. I just want to think about everything, draw and write about everything... Actually "The Wall" is not my type, usually i'm watching Tarkovsky, Kieslowski, Tarr, Bergman and some directors' like these. But even The Wall is a different type movie, it's explaining a lot of things that unavailable to explain. Just must be watched...

I started listening to Pink Floyd quite recently (last year) and I had been avoiding listening to The Wall until I saw this film. Now that I've seen it twice and listened to the album a few times, I think I can safely say that this film is the optimum way to experience The Wall. It's incredibly well produced despite being an adaptation of an album and pretty much all of the imagery presented in the film is meaningful and well conveyed.My first viewing of this film was accompanied by my friend who had to tell me about the deal with Pink being a Rock Star and the Neo-Nazi meetings representing his concerts. The one real problem I have with this movie is that I honestly can't imagine understanding it without that information already given to me.Conclusion: wonderful movie, watch it with a friend who's already seen it and you'll have one hell of a time.

This film documents the slow descent into madness of a young man beset by demons stemming from the loss of his father in the second world war and the cruel and rigid treatment at the hands of his public school teachers and headmaster. The film is filled with both graphic and fantastical images of violent psychotic delusions. It is a deep exploration of anxiety, depression and psychosis filled with vivid images of war, rape, rioting and Naziesque megalomania. It depicts failed relationships, impotence and unfaithfulness. It is a brutal story. Best avoided forever. I've been a Pink Floyd fan my entire teen and adult life but I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to The Wall again.

Pink Floyd's The Wall is already an overrated album with plenty of songs that are filler, some good songs have weak lyrics and some great lyrics use weak music just to convey the message. The film takes all that, keeping all the filler, and adding even weaker pieces like When the Tigers Broke Free 1 and 2.Some of the weaknesses of the Wall's story are amplified even more. The horrors of WWII are shown even though the boy had no way of knowing. It is presented as if the boy himself were a war veteran, suffering from a case of contagious PTSD, perhaps by touching his father's medals or uniform. The album alludes to the Luftwaffe's raids, but the film makes it seem as if it the boy experienced the war on the front line first hand, which is laughable.The film, with its completely new songs, reordered playlist and freedom to add scenes with no music, does not address the transformation of Pink from rock star to neo-fascist leader. It's just a hole in the plot that is left to our imagination. Fine for an audio album, not for a visual film.Some of the things look theatrical and comic - the headmaster in the tunnel looked like a clown, the neo-fascist rally's synchronized dancing was less "Triumph of the Will" and more Macarena.The animation goes from beautiful (Goodbye Blue Sky, Empty Spaces) to ridiculous - The Trial with a talking buttocks as presiding judge.A lot of mistakes were done. If I were Pink Floyd (or if I were Waters), just as the protagonist was a composite character, so should the album be a composite, not loyal to The Wall, but taking the best of Pink Floyd to make something larger than life. The song Money would've been a great piece, Pink as a rock star enjoying his riches, then the dissatisfaction with the political system, shown via Animals, would've made the transition from rock star to fascist leader a great one.It all boils down to this - did they want to make a great Pink Floyd-based, The Wall film or make a long music video for The Wall? It is not a binary issue, but a gradient, since they already changed the order of events, added new songs and reworked original songs, so this was not a pure "The Wall" film. My opinion is that they should've added things from their past, reworked if needed, to tell a better story, to make a better film rather than one truer to the album.Perhaps that's an idea for the remake.