'Control' splits our critics

The case for…
My heart sinks every time a new music biopic is announced. Can it be true that someone has cast Elijah Wood and Mike Myers to play Iggy Pop and Keith Moon in a new film? Yes, it’s really happening.

And so it was with Anton Corbijn, Joy Division and ‘Control’: guilty until proven innocent. When I first saw the film in Cannes, my reaction was lukewarm. It was solid, well photographed and intelligently performed, especially by Sam Riley as Curtis, but it wasn’t worth the hysterical reviews it was gathering from critics and, crucially, it didn’t offer any unique insight into why this young man, who briefly enjoyed success with his band, hanged himself in his Macclesfield terrace in May 1980.

Then I saw the film again a fortnight ago and I felt differently. I still think it’s been a little over-praised and that Corbijn treats his subject with too much reverence. But I also think that he tells a fascinating story with calm restraint and without the hysteria and wild conjecture that could so easily have plagued the film. Importantly, he doesn’t offer any crass signifiers of the coming tragedy. He treats Curtis’ epilepsy sensitively, his portrayal of the push-and-pull between Curtis’ domestic life and his life with the band is convincing and unusual, and the effect of both these elements on Curtis’ depression – and ultimately his suicide – is utterly believable.

But the real brilliance of the film lies in the gig scenes. Riley is blinding as Curtis singing live, and the actors playing Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris do a great job: their sound is spot-on. The fact that they are genuinely performing gives an energy to the live scenes that other music films often lack, having to make do with the odd quick flash of an instrument and a dodgy mime act.
Dave Calhoun, Time Out film editor

The case against…
‘Control’ has a lot going for it. You don’t get much better source material than ‘Touching From a Distance’, the biography by Ian’s wife, Deborah Curtis. You can’t fault Sam Riley’s central performance. And the talented Anton Corbjin does a great job of telling the Joy Division story. It’s just it’s the version of the story we already know – the legend rather than the murkier, messier reality. Its biggest problem is that it lacks light and shade, and panders to the Curtis mythology rather than the ambiguities and contradictions that made him human. To this end, Corbjin attaches portentous significance to practically every minor event, whether it’s Curtis listening to a Bowie album or Manchester looking a bit grey. Curtis also has fits every ten minutes and, by the heavy-handed way epilepsy is presented, you’d think it was alien brain AIDS or something. If being in Joy Division was as miserable as ‘Control’ makes it out to be, it’s a wonder the rest didn’t kill themselves as well.

As the members of New Order themselves have often stated, while predisposed to introspection, Curtis had a wicked sense of humour; he was taken on as singer because of his personality rather than his pipes. Clinically depressed, morose, suicidal people don’t tend to be that charismatic in person, whereas Curtis was both popular (especially with the ladies) and, as Peter Saville stated, ‘the leader’ of a band including the hardly shy or retiring Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner.

The biggest crime is it tries to make sense of Curtis’ suicide. Despite the pressures of epilepsy, divorce, touring, fatherhood and burgeoning success, most of the people closest to Curtis remain uncertain as to his motives, with Tony Wilson once remarking that Curtis may have done himself in ‘to help out’ after becoming a burden to his family and friends. By the end of ‘Control’ this complex confluence of events has been boiled down to a simple equation of (epilepsy + child) x affair = hang self. If your audience already know how your story ends, you have to make the journey unpredictable. By mapping such a linear route to the grave, Corbjin sells both Curtis and himself short.
Eddy Lawrence, Time Out music editor