IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?

 

I found the full version of Pink Floyd The Wall film on YouTube and watched it last night. I first saw this in 1982 in Auckland at the Academy Cinema (below Auckland Central library. It still stands up well - the film, I don't know about the library.

I would have preferred to watch the film in a cinema given its powerful imagery (both in filming and direction by Alan Parker and the Gerald Scarfe caricaturisation) but it still came through strongly on the TV screen.

There are many themes in the album and the film - alienation, insanity, depression, drug misuse, greed, sexual dysfunction, domineering women, the corrupt pop/rock industry, Margaret Thatcher's Britain, radical right wing violence and, of course a failing British education system.

Although being an expose of the dangers of the radical right and fascism, the film still attracted right wing movements around the world some of whom adopted the symbolism and mannerisms of the protagonist's imaginary fascist political movement.

Underlining all of that is a general feeling of despair. Roger Waters the writer and drive behind the music and the film seems to have projected much of his own experience and insecurities which some pundits have said are autobiographical although others have said that the central character is an amalgamation of Roger Waters and other band members like ex - member Syd Barrett and Richard Wright.

Whatever. It still manages to play on the senses in a visceral way which is pretty good for a piece of work that's over 40 years old.

IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE - PINK FLOYD