This was because The Wall is dark. It's dark, morbid, graphic, and depressing. It's brilliant in its music, which is Pink Floyd at their spacey best, and it's brilliant in its aforementioned cartoon segments, which are really rather good if completely unnerving - think Tim Burtonesque figures on acid minus the happiness plus horrible disfigurement and spacey Floyd in the background. At one point the Woodstock dove explodes into the Big Dark Falcon of Death which turns into a bomber plane and terrorizes a very gray England. Orwell with surround sound. But this was my problem with it. Yes, it's an hour and a half of rather well-done bleakness, but that's just it - a portrait of the world as a horrible place full of war and abandonment and oedipus complexes, and the story of how a little boy turned out to be a psycho because of that - no real hope, no real ok-how-can-we-change-that. I guess if it started being hopeful and optimistic the artistic vision would be compromised, but I personally like my films to have some sort of ray of light somewhere eventually. So in conclusion, The Wall - brilliant film, worth seeing, that I didn't end up liking.
Other pictures of fun Czech awesomeness, no cartoon bugs allowed:
You want peace? I want peace, too! Awesome! Now...uh...what next?
RIOT POLICE: No one goes up the castle steps! We shall guard these steps with the blood of our fathers! YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
LARGE CROWD OF PROTESTERS: uh, well, do you mind if we just go around then and get to the same point?
RIOT POLICE: Yeah, no worries mate.
LARGE CROWD OF PROTESTERS: Well, that's all right then. Cheerio, cap'n.
(I'm exaggerating. The police were very nice and the protest was peaceful and lawful, which was awesome.)
Me, sticking my head out of the window of the train from Plzen to Prague like an overexcited dog. Note: I do not normally look this red, or this distorted. Actually, I barely recognise myself in this picture. Internet anonymity maintained!
Life is grand.
