Pink Floyd Film Review: The Wall, By Roger Waters

1179 Words3 Pages

The Wall Mind-bending psychedelic rock, rainbow prisms, and the druggie culture of the seventies may be the first thing that comes to mind when people hear Pink Floyd. But look inside and there’s something deeper. Diving into the vault of Pink Floyd songs one could see a very common theme. Not only is Pink Floyd songwriter Roger Waters a skilled music composer, but he is able to write astounding and notable stories through his songs. The story he created through writing the album: The Wall is nothing but impressive. The second to last song on the album, “The Trial” is the epitome of a well written closer. The conclusion contains the dark, high, and intense sound listeners are used to as well as a meaningful narrative. The plot is emotional
Orchestral instruments play background roles throughout the album, but in “The Trial” they dominate, easily comprising over half the score of the song. Distorted electric guitars blare, heavy drums boom, and a large brass section roars. The unsettling woodwind section of flutes and clarinets blast high short notes and xylophones descend in runs. It’s like an orchestra playing for one of the most terrifying broadway musicals of all time. The result is an almost cinematical, circus-like track which throws the listener off balance with every stanza. Much like what Pink himself is
They slither into his mind and form themselves into the influential personas of people he knows. First the prosecutor representing Floyd’s brain brings forth an issue he’s been ignoring all this time. He’s begun to “show feelings of an almost human nature,” and tells the judge that this simply “will not do.” Next his childhood schoolmaster wastes no time rushing to take the stand. In the Pink Floyd film he is pictured as an old skeletal puppet of sorts who pleads to the judge “If they'd let me have my way I could have flayed him into shape.” Perhaps this is Floyd pondering the idea that if he had been hammered into a mold of a perfect citizen none of this would be happening. After that a scorpion of a woman emerges from behind the shadows of his wall. It’s his wife. She accuses him of not being around enough. His wife screeches at him that he has become distant from her. Floyd sits numbly unaffected by her words. Previously in the album he labels her as fat and psychopathic. Therefore her words mean nothing to him, perhaps he doesn’t love her at all. A more important and compassionate woman then takes the stand, his mother. His mother is depicted as a literal helicopter insinuating that she is a helicopter parent. She is emotional and scared for her sons fate. Stressed to think what could happen to him. Her wall like protectiveness mirrors the same wall Floyd has built. She

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