Why watching Pink Floyd: The Wall feels like living inside a nation’s collapse

Director Alan Parker's Pink Floyd: The Wall is not just a personal story; it also portrays a nation's social and political decline. Critics have claimed that this 1982 film still feels like they are living amid a nation's decline. The subject draws out all the difficult realities so deeply that it is difficult to believe without seeing them.

We all know that Pink Floyd: The Wall is a film made with a splendid combination of music and screenplay. While telling the story of a young man's mental and emotional turmoils and isolation, it highlights a different side of society.

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Many have admired the film for infusing a little intellectual taste and painting a clear picture of the society. On the one hand, it portrays the crisis of personal life, and it effortlessly portrays the reflection of the social and political decline of the nation. Very naturally, when watching this film, the viewer feels as if they are living in the lap of the destruction of a nation.

What is the symbolic reference of "The Wall"?

Bricks are needed to build a wall. And Pink takes every sorrow and pain in her life and places it on her wall as a brick. This durable wall symbolizes her mental isolation. This is exactly how mentally disturbed she can be.

Each brick of Pink reflects his personal experiences, anger, disappointment, and failure. This wall builds a mental fortress around him, which gradually isolates him from society. This film instills awareness about mental illness.

The Backstory of Pink Floyd: The Wall

According to the classic film based on Pink Floyd's 1979 album The Wall, during World War II, the protagonist's father was killed in battle. Then the story took a turn.

This experience of his father's departure began to have a profound effect on Waters' music and writing. After his father's death, Pink's mother's overprotectiveness, constant bullying at school, failure in love, and the instability of society made him mentally isolated. The issues led him to build a wall around himself.

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He started to seclude himself from others, making it the origin of the album's backstory. In the drama film Pink Floyd: The Wall, the life story of a young man named Pink is presented very clearly.

Why watching Pink Floyd: The Wall feels like living inside a nation’s collapse

Throughout the entire British adult musical surrealist film, Pink's mental state and isolation reflected his personal life on the one hand, while on the other hand, this film also brought to the fore the image of the social and political decline of a nation. The greed for power, war, tyranny, oppression, failure of love, and isolation are indeed vivid symbols of the decline of a nation.

Although Pink's wall in this film is a symbol of his own decline, it can also be seen as a symbol of the decline of society in general.

Constant bullying of young kids in schools hinders their mental peace

School plays a foundational role in a child's formative years.

In Another Brick in the Wall, Pink talks about the bullying and oppression of his school life. Lyrics in this song can be considered a symbol of anger and protest against the education system, which suppresses a child's creative freedom, asking them to mold into pre-established academic blocks.

The dark side of war

Pink Floyd: The Wall throws light upon violence, stories of torture, and the lifeless bodies of a warzone. It despises the ignorant and unspeakable side of combat. At the same time, it questions the purpose of power dynamics, especially when the destruction is beyond repair.

In World War II, the death of his father came as a dark moment in Pink's life, making him mentally devastated. The irrationality and oppression of war affected his mental well-being, shaping the experience as a symbol of the decline of a nation.

The failure in love

When love came into Pink's life, who was suffering from sorrow and misery about his life, he saw a ray of hope where everything fell into place. His faith is restored, and he wishes the newfound romance to be an end to his miseries, but reality is disappointing. The deterioration and separation of Pink's relationship with her wife worsened his mental state.

Gradually, Pink began to sink into a sea of loneliness and isolation. The failure of this love became another "brick" to build that wall of her life.

This leaves us wondering if love is a pragmatic solution to the roots of all suffering. A conflicted thought prevailed that replacing war with love may not save a nation with an approaching doomsday.

The consistent struggle to deflect self-criticism

If one has to admit one's guilt at the end of a mental breakdown, it might speak volumes about the empathy from society. In the last scenes of the film, Pink expresses his guilt with the song "The Trial".

Here, he puts himself on trial. All the mistakes and sorrows of his past are reflected. He regrets the mistakes he has made in life, and Pink chooses the path of self-criticism. This highlights the society's inability to make it up to the victims of 'the wall.'

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Pink Floyd: The Wall is not just a description of one person's mental journey; it is a story of the invisible walls built in human society. These walls are built within us, made of experience, sorrow, oppression, and fear. Just as the walls in this film make the young man lonely, so too the walls built in our society keep people away from each other.

Pink Floyd: The Wall tells a story with a different flavor in a completely different way. Its consistency with reality is unforgettable. In fact, this film teaches us to question what kind of walls we are building around ourselves.