Film

Control (2007)

Director: Anton Corbijn

Movie review

From Time Out New York

See Bono and the gang brooding on the cover of The Joshua Tree? That’s the work of Anton Corbijn, the rock photographer who shapes b&w moodiness into more depth than is sometimes merited. While that criticism can’t be levied at Joy Division—the propulsive Manchester quartet that revolutionized postpunk—it might be fairly lobbed at the life of the band’s lead singer, Ian Curtis, who, apart from his suicide at age 23, was pretty much a normal dude. He worked at an unemployment office. He drank in bars. He cheated on his wife. He suffered from fits.

Corbijn and uncanny imitator Sam Riley now turn that life into shadowy, smudged poetry—and you have to wonder if that’s the best way to honor this essential band. When Control bursts into scenes of raw musical performance (the actors all play their own instruments live), it is simply unparalleled: a record of the transformative power of thrumming bass and kinetic, club-based awakening. Many of these moments were covered in Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People, but whereas that film focused more on Steve Coogan’s Tony Wilson, Control better captures the import of musical urgency.

Except when it doesn’t. Samantha Morton, as gifted an actor as there is, has what may be her most dowdy and boring role as Curtis’s wife, Deborah, unfailingly devoted and then, suddenly, a weeping widow. The band’s history is presented fairly schematically too, especially during its “Eureka!” flashes. Corbijn knows the dreamy lull of a rock song, not real life or how to turn mundanity into meaning.

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