Post by ronnierocketago on Apr 25, 2006 3:42:58 GMT
Soon to be posted at AndersonVision.com!
PINK FLOYD THE WALL (1982; USA)
Directed by – Alan Parker
Written by – Roger Waters (Album & Screenplay)
Starring: Bob Geldof, Christine Hargreaves, James Laurenson, Eleanor David, Kevin McKeon, Bob Hoskins, David Bingham, Jenny Wright
Genre: Musical / Drama / MPAA Classification: R Running Length: 95 minutes U.S. Release Date: 8/13/1985 Composer: Robert Ezrin, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and Michael Kamen. Cinematography: Peter Biziou Studio: MGM Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35: 1 Online References: IMDB
I will be quite honest with everyone. I just hate musicals in general, whatever on the stages of Broadway or on the silver screen. Perhaps it’s because apart from the fact that most are either campy or quite goofy or that it takes too much suspension of belief in reality for me in order to comprehend people singing and dancing in between scenes of serious dialogue. In fact, the only musical of the last 20 years to which I enjoyed was the “South Park” movie, which itself was a parody of the genre.
Thankfully, I am gracious to have found the first true original musical movie to which I dig to hell and back, albeit one that thankfully does not conform to the usual cinematic trappings and expectations of the musical genre.
We shall set the way back machine to the late 1970s, where quite arguably the biggest rock band in the world, Britain’s own Pink Floyd, ruled the industry and the Nation of Rock with legendary albums of work, most notably with “Dark Side of the Moon” and “Animals”. With the pressures and turmoils of the rock star lifestyle, Pink Floyd bass player and chief songwriter Roger Waters soon felt alienated from both the fans and members of his close circle. This sense that he has built a “wall” around himself from the rest of humanity inspired him to create a concept album and by 1979, Pink Floyd released perhaps their most ambitious project in “The Wall,” which will go on to be one of the best-selling albums in history. After a legendary limited concert series, and with Pink Floyd’s muscle in the entertainment world, Roger Waters was able to turn “The Wall” into a motion picture to which he scripted, with Oscar-winning director Alan Parker and revered cartoonist Gerald Scarfe in tow.
Without using any dialogue to simply move the narrative, “Pink Floyd The Wall” presents the story of Pink (Bob Geldof), a rock star on the verge of insanity. With Parker’s moving visuals and Scarfe’s surreal, sensual-stabbing animations set to the tunes from Pink Floyd’s album, we witness Pink’s painful memories of his childhood, to which compounded with his lack of humanistic openness as an adult, has led him to build up a metaphysical “wall” in his mind to isolate himself from the rest of the world. The suffocation of his creativity in the public school system, his failed marriage, his heavy medicated drug use, growing up without his father (a casualty of World War 2), and hallucinating his rock concerts to that of fascist rallies, all are bricks that become his wall. With his wall now complete as his madness has almost overtaken him, Pink must place himself on trial within the abyss of his psyche and determine his fate.
“Pink Floyd The Wall” was greatly slammed upon its original release by then old guard of critics who cited it as a pretentious and pointless bore, who belittled it as something that only Pink Floyd fans would get anything of any serious value out of the movie. Similarly, the film’s creators in Waters, Parker, and Scarfe all felt disappointed in varying levels with the final product.
Perhaps why the Baby Boomers were not moved by it, but the subsequent Generations of X and Y seem to dig the movie is that of generational experiences. The Gen-X crowd practically grew up with MTV and the serious waves of artistically-shot music videos in the 1980s and 90s made by such future auteur masters like David Fincher and Spike Jonze, with my fellow Gen-Y siblings now knowing song and video as indistinguishable. In that regard, “Pink Floyd The Wall” was way before its time in how it was a would-be revolutionary take on the musical. No more grand stage-like productions or silly song numbers of times past, instead we get imagery that baffle and dance upon our sagacity on sync with music.
Oh my god, the music itself is beyond wonderful. Being one of the greatest rock n roll bands in history, Pink Floyd were so money in their prime with their “The Wall” album. As featured in the movie, we hear such legendary songs of theirs from guitarist David Gilmour’s immortal guitar solo on “Comfortably Numb,” to the very foot-medley fun of “Another Brick in the Wall” (which was set to probably the most famous sequence of the movie, that of the dehumanizing school systematic “sausage grinder”), and of course, my person favorite melody of the album, the very charismatic street militant song “Run Like Hell”.
While I believe that “Pink Floyd The Wall” is a unique cinematic experiment that was conducted between several quite talented, if insanely egocentric and independent, forces at hand, I concede that the film is problematic. The editing narrative is in consisted; for we would have a number and then break after the intensity of it (like “What Shall We Do Now?”) and then the consecutive non-stop streak of “In the Flesh,” “Run Like Hell,” and “Waiting for the Worms” which can quite possibly leave one fatigued.
However, with the darn ambition of this whole movie, plus when the narrative is going full steam ahead, the movie is absolutely unbreakable. If anything, I am baffled as to why Parker practically disowned this picture, for the other would-be rock opera he would later direct, “Evita,” would hold neither the boldness nor creativity that Parker accomplished with “Pink Floyd The Wall”. Besides, Andrew Lloyd Webber sucks.
Film Rating - ****
PINK FLOYD THE WALL (1982; USA)
Directed by – Alan Parker
Written by – Roger Waters (Album & Screenplay)
Starring: Bob Geldof, Christine Hargreaves, James Laurenson, Eleanor David, Kevin McKeon, Bob Hoskins, David Bingham, Jenny Wright
Genre: Musical / Drama / MPAA Classification: R Running Length: 95 minutes U.S. Release Date: 8/13/1985 Composer: Robert Ezrin, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and Michael Kamen. Cinematography: Peter Biziou Studio: MGM Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35: 1 Online References: IMDB
I will be quite honest with everyone. I just hate musicals in general, whatever on the stages of Broadway or on the silver screen. Perhaps it’s because apart from the fact that most are either campy or quite goofy or that it takes too much suspension of belief in reality for me in order to comprehend people singing and dancing in between scenes of serious dialogue. In fact, the only musical of the last 20 years to which I enjoyed was the “South Park” movie, which itself was a parody of the genre.
Thankfully, I am gracious to have found the first true original musical movie to which I dig to hell and back, albeit one that thankfully does not conform to the usual cinematic trappings and expectations of the musical genre.
We shall set the way back machine to the late 1970s, where quite arguably the biggest rock band in the world, Britain’s own Pink Floyd, ruled the industry and the Nation of Rock with legendary albums of work, most notably with “Dark Side of the Moon” and “Animals”. With the pressures and turmoils of the rock star lifestyle, Pink Floyd bass player and chief songwriter Roger Waters soon felt alienated from both the fans and members of his close circle. This sense that he has built a “wall” around himself from the rest of humanity inspired him to create a concept album and by 1979, Pink Floyd released perhaps their most ambitious project in “The Wall,” which will go on to be one of the best-selling albums in history. After a legendary limited concert series, and with Pink Floyd’s muscle in the entertainment world, Roger Waters was able to turn “The Wall” into a motion picture to which he scripted, with Oscar-winning director Alan Parker and revered cartoonist Gerald Scarfe in tow.
Without using any dialogue to simply move the narrative, “Pink Floyd The Wall” presents the story of Pink (Bob Geldof), a rock star on the verge of insanity. With Parker’s moving visuals and Scarfe’s surreal, sensual-stabbing animations set to the tunes from Pink Floyd’s album, we witness Pink’s painful memories of his childhood, to which compounded with his lack of humanistic openness as an adult, has led him to build up a metaphysical “wall” in his mind to isolate himself from the rest of the world. The suffocation of his creativity in the public school system, his failed marriage, his heavy medicated drug use, growing up without his father (a casualty of World War 2), and hallucinating his rock concerts to that of fascist rallies, all are bricks that become his wall. With his wall now complete as his madness has almost overtaken him, Pink must place himself on trial within the abyss of his psyche and determine his fate.
“Pink Floyd The Wall” was greatly slammed upon its original release by then old guard of critics who cited it as a pretentious and pointless bore, who belittled it as something that only Pink Floyd fans would get anything of any serious value out of the movie. Similarly, the film’s creators in Waters, Parker, and Scarfe all felt disappointed in varying levels with the final product.
Perhaps why the Baby Boomers were not moved by it, but the subsequent Generations of X and Y seem to dig the movie is that of generational experiences. The Gen-X crowd practically grew up with MTV and the serious waves of artistically-shot music videos in the 1980s and 90s made by such future auteur masters like David Fincher and Spike Jonze, with my fellow Gen-Y siblings now knowing song and video as indistinguishable. In that regard, “Pink Floyd The Wall” was way before its time in how it was a would-be revolutionary take on the musical. No more grand stage-like productions or silly song numbers of times past, instead we get imagery that baffle and dance upon our sagacity on sync with music.
Oh my god, the music itself is beyond wonderful. Being one of the greatest rock n roll bands in history, Pink Floyd were so money in their prime with their “The Wall” album. As featured in the movie, we hear such legendary songs of theirs from guitarist David Gilmour’s immortal guitar solo on “Comfortably Numb,” to the very foot-medley fun of “Another Brick in the Wall” (which was set to probably the most famous sequence of the movie, that of the dehumanizing school systematic “sausage grinder”), and of course, my person favorite melody of the album, the very charismatic street militant song “Run Like Hell”.
While I believe that “Pink Floyd The Wall” is a unique cinematic experiment that was conducted between several quite talented, if insanely egocentric and independent, forces at hand, I concede that the film is problematic. The editing narrative is in consisted; for we would have a number and then break after the intensity of it (like “What Shall We Do Now?”) and then the consecutive non-stop streak of “In the Flesh,” “Run Like Hell,” and “Waiting for the Worms” which can quite possibly leave one fatigued.
However, with the darn ambition of this whole movie, plus when the narrative is going full steam ahead, the movie is absolutely unbreakable. If anything, I am baffled as to why Parker practically disowned this picture, for the other would-be rock opera he would later direct, “Evita,” would hold neither the boldness nor creativity that Parker accomplished with “Pink Floyd The Wall”. Besides, Andrew Lloyd Webber sucks.
Film Rating - ****