Pink Floyd: The Wall is a 1982 British musical psychological drama film directed by Alan Parker. It's a film adaptation of Pink Floyd's highly successful and critically acclaimed 1979 rock opera album of the same name, primarily written by the band's bassist and vocalist Roger Waters. It tells the story of burnt-out rockstar Pinkerton Floyd (based in part by Waters himself and former bandmate Syd Barrett), who, driven to insanity by the death of his father in World War II, childhood trauma, and the emptiness of his hedonistic rock-and-roll lifestyle, isolates himself from the world through a metaphorical brick wall in an attempt to protect himself.
The film opens to the 1936 Vera Lynn song "The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot" playing in the background as a hotel employee cleans the halls. Inside one of the hotel rooms, Pink is seen seated in a chair, motionless and expressionless as a burnt cigarette sits in his hand. The song "When the Tigers Broke Free, Part 1" (originally meant for the album, however only recorded later for the film) fades in as Pink reminisces on his father's death. As the hotel employee knocks on his door, he envisions a crowd of anticipating fans knocking at the gates to a venue, as well as a castle door shaking. The employee unlocks and opens the door, starting a musical sequence set to the explosive rocker "In the Flesh?". "So ya thought ya might like to go to a show? To feel the warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow.", Pink sings, as he receives his fans in concert in a fascist alter-ego as a flashback plays out revealing how his father was killed defending the Anzio beachhead during World War II, in Pink's infancy. The aftermath of the battle plays out to the song "The Thin Ice", juxtaposed with scenes of the adult Pink floating in his hotel pool.
The film subsequently goes back in time to Pink's childhood, where he is raised alone by his mother. The way the absence of his father affects his upbringing is scored by the first part of "Another Brick in The Wall", as he declares his father's absence "all just bricks in the wall". In the next scene, the young Pink discovers a scroll from the "kind old King George" (who was the king of the United Kingdom from 1932 to 1952), along with other relics of his father's military service, including a bullet, set to "When the Tigers Broke Free, Part 2". The first of many animated sequences in the movie then plays out, depicting the frivolousness of the war and the deaths of the countless individuals who were a part of it, set to the track "Goodbye Blue Sky". This fades to Pink walking down the tracks within a tunnel. He places the bullet he found earlier on the tracks, seeing it explode as the train runs over it. As the train passes he sees children peering out the windows, with odd "putty faces".
As the train passes, an angry voice echoes through the scene: "You! Yes you! Stand still laddie!". "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" kicks in as we see Pink in school being ridiculed by his teacher as he reads one of the boy's poems out loud (lyrics from the Pink Floyd song "Money"), before slapping his hand with a ruler. The next scene portrays the teacher in his own home, being forced to eat a piece of tough meat during dinner at his wife's silent command as Waters sings "But in the town, it was well known, when they got home at night, their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives.". The music builds up in tension as the scene cuts to the teacher spanking a student with a belt. The child screams, kicking off the album's big radio hit, "Another Brick in The Wall, Part 2". The scene plays out, Pink fantasizing about children entering the school, marching in unison and jumping into a meat grinder, becoming the "putty-faced" clones we see in the train earlier in the film. These students then start a riot, burning down the school and throwing the schoolmaster onto a bonfire.
The song "Mother" (rearranged and re-recorded with an orchestral backing for the movie) portrays Pink's relationship with his overprotective mother, juxtaposed with him growing up, getting married, and the apparent lack of love in said marriage. As time progresses, Pink, now a famous rockstar, phones home to his wife, only to discover that his wife is cheating on him with another man. As the track "What Shall We Do Now?" (an alternate version of the album track "Empty Spaces") fades in, another animated sequence plays out, portraying two flowers, a rose and a lily, caressing and interacting intimately with each other, before the lily ultimately consumes and destroys the rose. "What shall we use to fill the empty spaces, where waves of hunger roar?", Waters croons as the animation pans over a wall of many material goods such as cars, electronics, motorcycles and yachts. As the music escalates in intensity, the animation becomes greatly morbid and abstract, flashing many pieces of imagery including flowers turning into barbed wire, faces of people caught in the wall screaming, and a baby going through metamorphosis into a reptilian humanoid then a Neo-Nazi fascist bludging the head of a skeletal dark-skinned man as Waters screams out hedonistic decadent actions including buying countless materialistic goods, filling attics with cash, keeping people as pets, among others. The song ends with a hammer smashing a glass window, going directly into the next song.
"Young Lust" is the song that scores the next scene of the movie, taking place at a backstage party in one of Pink's concerts. Several groupies seduce securities guards and roadies to get backstage passes to the party as guitarist David Gilmour sings "Ooh, I need a dirty woman. Ooh, I need a dirty girl.". One of the groupies ends up catching Pink's attention, and is brought to his room in a seeming act of retaliation against his wife's unfaithfulness from Pink's end. However, as they enter the room, Pink seems ultimately uninterested in her; oblivious to her awe at his room and his possessions as he sits down and watches a movie on TV. The first, melancholic half of the song "One of My Turns" plays out, expressing the character's emotions of how he feels "Cold as a razor blade, tight as a tourniquet, dry as a funeral drum..". The song reaches an explosive climax in it's second half, mirroring Pink's own violent fit of rage as he begins to destroy everything in his hotel room and chasing the groupie, throwing various objects at her. She escapes as he cuts his own hand after throwing a television set out the window and onto the street below, shouting "Take that, f****rs!", his only non-lyrical line spoken in the film.
The next scene starts with a close-up of the debris in Pink's hotel room, before switching over to the hotel's pool (the same one earlier in the movie, during "The Thin Ice" sequence.), where his blood-stained hand is revealed, staining the pool water a dark red as the dark synthetic drones of "Don't Leave Me Now" fade in. This is followed by a partly-animated fantasy sequence in which Pink is watching TV in a much larger, and entirely empty room. The shadow of his wife emerges on the back wall before materializing into a twisted, praying mantis-like beast, then turning into the lily from "Empty Spaces". The song ends with Pink cowering in the corner of the room, tortured by both the imaginary creature and by the thoughts of his wife's adultery it represents. The next song, "Another Brick in The Wall, Part 3 begins with Pink smashing another TV in his room, this time with his guitar, as a hodge-podge of quick shots play out in an overwhelming stream-of-consciousness sequence depicting several of Pink's metaphorical "bricks in the wall" and more abstract events symbolizing his emotional upheaval. "No, don't think I'll need anything at all!" the song says, as he dismisses everyone and everything in his life as "All just bricks in the wall.". As the final bricks in his wall are placed, the quiet and emotionally tired "Goodbye Cruel World" plays out. He sits in a chair, motionless and expressionless as a burnt cigarette sits in his hand, mirroring the opening shots of the movie, creating a bookend to the first half of the movie.
Pink Floyd's The Wall, albeit here only recognized as a movie and an album, is more than that. It is a cultural event. Ever since their biggest critical and commercial success with 1973's The Dark Side of the Moon, the band have been greatly critical of the music industry and modern society as a whole. The Wall is the epitome of this criticism. A stark and brooding comment on the western world post-war, as well as a character piece, analyzing how childhood trauma can deeply affect one even up to adulthood. Pink is a flawed character, through and through, however the wall as a storytelling device allows us to empathize with him in a way that makes these flaws relatable, being a reflection not only of the decadence of the world post World War II, but of the very essence of human nature. The movie is visually intriguing, and the music which accompanies it holds up well to the times, all of this leading to Pink Floyd: The Wall being considered a timeless classic.