Pink Floyd: The Wall(1982)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Aug 13, 1982
A confined but troubled rock star descends into madness in the midst of his physical and social isolation from everyone.
Release Details
Original Release | Aug 13, 1982 | Moderate
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2026-10-13T11:49:26.904Z
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$2,712,095
$22,244,207
$21,556
$22,282,724
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Technical Specifications
Aspect Ratio: 2.39 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Language: English,German
Summaries
Plot Summary
- The film depicts the construction and ultimate demolition of a metaphorical wall. Though the film's symbolism is open to interpretation, the wall itself clearly reflects a sense of isolation and alienation.The protagonist (and unreliable narrator) of the film, Pink (Bob Geldof) is a rock star, one of several reasons behind his apparent depressive and detached emotional state. He is first seen in a quiet hotel room, having trashed it. The opening music is not by Pink Floyd, but is the Vera Lynn recording of "The Little Boy that Santa Claus Forgot". During the following scenes, it is revealed that Pink's father, a British soldier, was killed in action during World War II during Pink's infancy. The reference is almost certainly to the death of Roger Waters' real-life father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who died in combat in Italy during Operation Shingle (the Battle of Anzio) in February 1944. ("When the Tigers Broke Free, Part I"). The stampede of a modern rock concert is compared to soldiers running out of the foxholes to engage in combat ("In the Flesh?")The movie then flashes back to Pink as a young English boy growing up in the early 1950s. Pink longs for a father figure ("Another Brick in the Wall, Part I"). He discovers a scroll from "kind old King George" and other relics from his father's military service and death ("When the Tigers Broke Free, Part II"). One item he finds, a bullet, is placed on the track of an oncoming train, where he sees non-descript people riding the train. At school, he is caught writing poems in class and humiliated by the teacher who reads a poem (part of verse 2 of the song "Money"). It is revealed that the teacher is verbally abusive to the students because his wife is verbally abusive to him ("The Happiest Days of Our Lives"). Young Pink imagines a surrealistically oppressive school system in which children fall into a meat grinder. The children then rise in rebellion and destroy the school, carrying the teacher away to an unknown fate ("Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)"). Pink is also negatively affected by his overprotective mother ("Mother"). Such traumatic experiences are represented as "bricks" in the metaphorical wall he constructs around himself that divides him from society ("Empty Spaces").As an adult, Pink eventually marries, but he and his wife soon grow apart. While he is in the United States on tour, Pink learns that his wife is having an affair ("Young Lust"). He turns to a willing groupie (Jenny Wright), whom he brings back to his hotel room only to trash it in a violent anger, terrifying the groupie out of the room ("One of My Turns"). After she leaves screaming, Pink goes into a deep depression ("Don't Leave Me Now"). After smashing the television with his guitar, he vows that he doesn't need "anyone at all" ("Another Brick in the Wall, Part III"). With that, he mentally completes the wall that he started building to protect himself from being hurt ("Goodbye Cruel World").Pink slowly begins to lose his mind to metaphorical "worms". He shaves off all of his body hair (an incident inspired by former bandmate Syd Barrett, who appeared at a 1975 recording session of "Wish You Were Here", having shaved his eyebrows and body hair) and, while watching The Dam Busters (1955) on television, morphs into his neo-Nazi alter-ego. Pink's manager (Bob Hoskins), along with the hotel manager (Michael Ensign) and some paramedics, break into the hotel room and discover Pink. They take him away into a waiting limousine outside the hotel and inject him with drugs to enable him to perform ("Comfortably Numb").Pink fantasizes that he is a dictator and his concert is a neo-Nazi rally. Nazi-Pink holds a rally, and looks for people who are different, "queers", "coons", dopers, and orders them "against the wall". ("In the Flesh"). His followers proceed to attack ethnic minorities ("Run Like Hell"), and Pink holds a rally in suburban London ("Waiting for the Worms"). The scene is intercut with images of animated marching hammers that goose-step across ruins. Pink then stops hallucinating and screams "Stop!" and takes refuge in a bathroom stall at the concert venue, reciting poems which would later be used as lyrics on Pink Floyd's "Your Possible Pasts" from "The Final Cut" album and "5:11 AM (The Moment of Clarity)" from Roger Waters' album "The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking".In a climatic animated sequence, Pink puts himself on trial ("The Trial"). He is depicted as a small pink rag doll that rarely moves. The judge is a giant pair of buttocks, with two backward facing legs, an anus for a mouth and a scrotum for a chin. The lawyer is a tall, menacing, vulture-like man and the schoolmaster is an abusive, hateful marionette. After hearing from the parties and witnesses (Pink's wife and mother), the judge orders the wall to be torn down. Following a prolonged silence, the wall explodes and shows a montage of events from the entire film, and Pink is last heard screaming. The film concludes with three children cleaning up a pile of debris after an earlier riot ("Outside the Wall"). It is unknown whatever has happened to Pink, leaving the viewer to decide.
Storyline
- Rock star Pink Floyd is a tortured soul. Because of his childhood, he has always tried to make meaningful emotional connections to other living creatures. That childhood includes not having a male role model with his father having been killed in the war, his overprotective mother smothering him, and an oppressive school system quashing his natural creativity. Being a rock star, he is often wanted more because of what he is than who he is. The most recent failure in that true connection to someone or something else is his marriage, when on tour, he discovers that his wife back home is cheating on him. His response is to go in the opposite direction, by building a figurative wall around him to isolate himself from the rest of the world, but not before showing graphically his feelings on different gut levels. The question becomes if he or anyone else can do anything to tear down the wall in a meaningful way. — Huggo When his wife leaves him during a tour, the rock star Pink Floyd (Bob Geldof) becomes paranoid and mad, building a wall between the world in his mind and the real world. The process has begun during his childhood and loses his father in the war, missing him as a role model. His overprotective mother and the repressive education at school help to build the insanity process. Pink brings a willing groupie back to his hotel room, only to destroy it in a violent anger once she annoys him, scaring her away. Soon he suddenly regrets building the wall and becomes a violent fascist dictator, and his soldiers proceed to attack people. He then screams stop and goes on trial in his mind for what he has done, and then he finally tears down the wall as penalty. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
