Film #185 - Pink Floyd The Wall (1982)
Pink Floyd The Wall is director Alan Parker’s fever-dream adaptation of the well-known rock opera/album. Now, Parker was (and is) no stranger to films with significant musical content, having directed Fame, Birdy, Evita and The Commitments, to name a few. With The Wall, however, he actually hit a wall named Roger Waters and their disagreements led to the film not quite being all it could be, but still a powerful and entertaining work.
The movie, like the album, tells the story of fictional rock star Pink (no relation to the later real-life Pink), played by Boomtown Rats and Live Aid star Bob Geldof, as he descends into madness as his life falls apart during a tour. Much of the music is taken directly from the album (although often extended and re-mixed) and the narrative follows very closely, often literally showing the imagry being sung. There is no real dialogue to speak of, only that which is used as background noise. Everything comes from the lyrics.
This approach makes the film difficult for those unfamiliar with the work to follow wahat’s going on as it jumps from reality to fantasy, live-action to animation, even moving around through the story’s timeline. Still, given the nature of The Wall, it’s difficult to imagine it being done any other way.
The casting of Geldof (a minor-level pop star with no acting experience) was perhaps the first place where Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters (who wrote virtually all of the original album) first clashed with Parker. Waters had started the ball rolling on the film with the intention of playing Pink himself. Pink was an amalgam of Waters (the losing-his-father-at-a-young-age part) and original Floyd frontman Syd Barret (the going-completely-bonkers part). Parker felt that Waters did not have enough screen presence to pull off the role and, so, went with Geldof. He even had Geldof re-record the parts that required Pink to sing on-screen, another sore spot for Waters. But Parker was right at least in the point that Geldof does a great job with the role. He could do the swagger of the rock star in full swing, but (due, no doubt, to seeing enough of it in his personal life), he could also show the star-in-decline. His “mad” scenes are chilling and believable. Having seen and heard Waters, I suspect he would have had a tendency towards the theatrical (a mark of Pink Floyd), while Geldof was able to match Parker’s vision.
There’s not much in the way of other notable actors in The Wall. One can recognize Bob Hoskins in the role of Pink’s manager and there are a few notable cameos and actors who would be notable later in small roles, but the focus is relentlessly on Pink, himself. This, again, comes from the album. While this kind of strong introspection is often off-putting, here it underlines his isolation.
Of course, there’s no complaining about the music. The Wall may have been one of the most divisive of albums for the band, but it is undeniably one of their greatest works. Driven by Waters, the band bent to his will and produced a lasting classic, on par with anything they had done before. I’ve often said that you could populate just about anything with Floyd music and you’d have an entertaining film (although La Carrera Panamericana strains that notion). The changes help keep things interesting and there were even a couple of tracks not previously available (”When The Tigers Broke Free”, for instance) so there was something new for everyone. Geldof does fine with his material, again providing an intersting alternate cut to the original.
Although he may not have had the support of the material’s creator, Parker was in full control of the visuals and some of it is quite stunning. Although obviously influenced by the artwork from the original album and the screenplay/concept work put together by Waters and the film’s animator, Gerald Scarfe, Parker’s more realistic portrayal of the locations (battle scenes, etc.) makes the maddening events occuring in them all the more striking.
I can certainly see why Waters was disappointed with the film: it’s not his. Unlike the band, he could not bend the film fully to his will and, as it would never be the thing he wanted it to be, he sees it as a failure. But film is about collaboration and, despite its troubled origin, Pink Floyd The Wall is a great adaptation of a great work.