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Making Sense of The Trial

I’m a big fan of the 1982 film adaptation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, based on the 1979 rock opera of the same name. The penultimate song “The Trial” acts as the climax of the story and only leaves one song for any falling action. A trial is being held in Pink’s mind to determine what to do with him after he lost all sanity, featuring testimony from the three characters that made the most impact on his life.

For a brief explanation of the film, Pink is a famous British rockstar on tour. His father died in World War II when he was only a boy, leaving him reliant on his mother. He is beaten into conformity by his Scottish schoolmaster. He grows away from his wife during his musical career; his wife taking on a lover and he begins dissociating in front of the television. He begins to have manic episodes, shaving his eyebrows and his head. He overdoses or disassociates shortly before a show, and his manager gets him awake, but now Pink is hallucinating that he is a nazi-esque dictator, and his concert is a rally. This delusion escalates until eventually Pink screams for it to stop, and The Trial begins.

The song starts with a door opening, revealing Pink slumped at the bottom of The Wall. Pink is represented by a Faceless doll. We first see the Faceless when Pink is a child during “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II).” He is daydreaming about the schoolchildren being beaten into conformity and becoming Faceless; what everyone else expects them to be, regardless of how they feel about it.

The Faceless make other appearances but are notably included int the rally delusion. Pink’s audience began as a normal crowd but became Faceless and moved in sync. Representing Pink as Faceless is telling the audience that he has lost his agency and the rest of his sanity.

A crane shot is emulated by zooming out from Pink from a bird’s eye view. This shot is demonstrating how small he feels in comparison to The Wall. The size difference is highlighted again when the Worm is walking towards Pink, who is still at the bottom of The Wall. The Worm is even taller than The Wall, making Pink look even smaller, representing how much power the Worm holds over Pink.

The Prosecutor (a portion of Pink’s subconscious) charges Pink with “feelings of an almost human nature,” telling the audience that Pink feels he has committed a grievous crime by trying to connect with others instead of staying inside his wall.

The first witness, the schoolmaster, laments at his inability to hammer the creativity and liveliness out of Pink in school. The schoolteacher turns into a hammer to demonstrate this, further continuing the hammer imagery present throughout the film. The hammers represent an unquestioning obedience to the people in power and are often shown in scenes where one’s humanity is lost, similar to the Faceless.

Next is Pink’s wife, appearing as the grotesque she turned into in “Don’t Leave Me Now.” From the time that the audience met the wife to that song, Pink has been trying to call her with no responses. It is during this song that Pink finally accepts that his wife has left him for another man, and the idea of her is transformed into a grotesque in Pink’s mind.

In this sequence, the camera pulls back, making Pink appear smaller and places in the corner of the frame. The wife’s human shadow is seen on the wall walking toward Pink until the shadow transforms and grows into the grotesque, attacking Pink. This size difference illustrates that the construct of his wife holds power over him.

The contrast in size between Pink and a creation of his mind in this song is a parallel to the contrast between Pink and the Worm. In both these songs, Pink is attacking himself for failing to connect with others. This style of shot where Pink appears smaller in the frame than the other character only appears with his wife and during The Trial; once with the Worm and once with The Wall itself.

This could be taken to mean that the loss of his wife was the most impactful to Pink’s psyche out of the things that happened before The Trial. His wife complains that Pink “had to go his own way” instead of spending time with her, further illustrating that his lack of connection with his wife was one of the more impactful things to happen to Pink.

Lastly, Pink’s mother comes in as a flying plane, her voice calling out with plane noises going from the right channel to the left (which makes for a very cool effect when listening with headphones!). Her taking the form of a plane most certainly connects with the other plane imagery throughout the film, notably the scene where Pink’s father dies from a plane crash.

The planes are also seen at the funeral where young Pink is playing with a toy war plane after “The Thin Ice”, used during “Goodbye Blue Sky” as a representation of the war’s presence over everything, an incoming plane during a montage relating to the wall being built and Pink losing sanity during “Another Brick in the Wall (Part III),” and lastly in “Nobody Home” when a war plane is briefly seen on the TV that Pink is watching, and the sight of the plane makes him turn off the TV.

Having his mother appear as a plane connects her testimony with memories of the pain of the war lingers on after it’s ended and of his father’s death early on in his life resulting in Pink missing a father figure.

Pink’s construction of his mother is interesting. His mother is likely the one who inspired him to build the wall (as demonstrated in “Mother”), as she became overly protective of him after the loss of his father. This overdose of affection could have led Pink to push her away, and her accusation of “why’d he ever have to leave me” just another punishment on Pink’s part for attempting to grow up and connect with others.

The last singing role in the song is the Worm, who immediately finds Pink guilty, but for what is never stated. The Worm cites the way Pink made his wife and mother suffer by not showing emotion toward them as evidence of Pink’s wrongdoing. The sentence is for Pink to be “exposed,” i.e., to tear down the wall.

Pink’s subconscious knows that he’s done wrong by pushing the women in his life away and wants to punish him for it. This is at odds with the Prosecutor’s charge of “feelings” and Pink’s attempts to connect with someone. Pink is both trying to punish himself for not staying in his self-isolation and for the negative effects his self-isolation had on his relationships.

The solution that Pink comes up with, or rather, the Worm comes up with, is to tear down the wall. This can be taken to mean that Pink has stopped isolating himself and has reached out for help and has begun to heal, although it’s not made explicitly clear one way or the other.

The following song, “Outside the Wall,” has children picking up bricks and milk bottles from the rubble in a city street. The lyrics add to this picture, that “the ones who really love you” are outside the wall and are giving their all trying to bring it down. This provides evidence to the hypothesis that Pink has received support from loved ones.

Pink confronts each of the figures that caused him to build his wall during The Trial, and only after this confrontation can his problems be resolved. Taking the time to think deeply about what details of Pink’s story are all represented in this song lends for a greater appreciation to it and the film as a whole. That and it’s amazing to watch Gerald Scarfe’s animations.

Works Cited