Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Joy Division (2008)
Director: Grant Gee
Movie review
From Time Out London
What with ‘24 Hour Party People’, ‘Control’ and Chris Rodley’s BBC4 Factory Records survey, you might think the story of England’s most influential post-punk band was already covered. But you’d be wrong. Although the three surviving members tell it their way, this is not your usual cut-and-paste rock-doc but a visionary piece of filmmaking in its own right, shaped around an insightful muso-socio-geography. Joy Division’s songs were a product of vocalist-lyricist Ian Curtis refracting JG Ballardian poetics through his own neurological imbalance and emotional fragility.Courtesy of revealing testimonies and priceless live footage, we see how this combined with his band’s Pistols-inspired DIY rebellion and Manchester’s post-industrial decay in the enduring sonic monuments of the albums ‘Unknown Pleasures’ and ‘Closer’. Gee’s camera lingers on the sites where it happened (including Islington’s former Britannia Row Studios), many of them now bearing scant traces of their contribution to history. The effect is a visual dialogue between ephemerality and permanence, utterly germane to an outfit whose brief tenure catalysed Manchester’s regeneration.
Despite the presence of sundry egghead popsters (including the late Tony Wilson and I-was-there critic Paul Morley), it’s all done with an admirable lack of pretension. There is a certain poise in its handling of the still-raw subject of Curtis’s suicide, with the suggestion that those around him, still only kids, didn’t have the maturity to deal with his downward spiral. Astute, complete, genuinely loving, it’s the film for which fans have waited decades. For everyone else, it’s a definitive celluloid model of how to approach music, and of memory’s galvanising interdependence.
Author: Trevor Johnston
Time Out London Issue 1967: May 2 - 9, 2008
Cast & crew
Director: Grant Gee
Genre(s): Documentaries
Rated: 15
Duration: 100 mins
UK Release: May 2 2008
Most popular on this site
Top Stories
Time Out's 50 greatest monster movies
As Joe Johnston’s long-awaited reinvention of Universal’s howl-at-the-moon classic ‘The Wolfman’ hits cinemas, Time Out lists our 50 favourite cinematic stalkers, growlers, slashers and biters.
Mark Kermode: A life in film
Dave Calhoun chats to Britain's most outspoken film critic and pundit ahead of the release of his memoirs
Has Ricky Gervais gone all serious?
The trailer to 'Cemetery Junction' suggests that its writer-director is suppressing his funny bone.
The genius of Roman Polanski
Ahead of his new film, 'The Ghost', we must forget the media circus and remember the artist pleads Wally Hammond
Oscars 2010: The nominees
Tom Huddleston offers his acute analysis on the list of nominees for the 2010 Academy Awards
Rotterdam 2010: Geoff Andrew's report
Geoff Andrew finds rich leftfield pickings at the 2010 Rotterdam Film Festival
Can Tom Ford cut it as a director?
After ten years as creative head of Gucci, Tom Ford has directed his first movie. Nina Caplan meets him
Time Out's 101 Films of the Decade
So here it is… Ten years, thousands of movies and millions of dollars in international box office, and it all boils down to this.
2009: The year in film
We look back at the best movies of 2009 and pick out some of our favourite lists, features and interviews.











What do you think?
Post your review now