Control: A Movie Review

After leaving the theater you might expect to gain more insight into the band whose biopic you’ve just paid to see, right? Best not to expect that from Anton Corbijn’s Control. The movie was horribly bleak, just as I expected—but it did not reflect the bleakness of Joy Divison itself which I did expect and was disappointed by. The thing about Joy Division is that there is so much intensity & beauty inherent in their bleakness. The first chords of say, “Shadowplay” or “New Dawn Fades” get into your head before they settle into the marrow of your bones, and transport you to a time and place entirely different then the one you are in. You open your eyes and are paralyzed– finding yourself of a sudden a dingy, claustrophobic Manchester club trying to keep hold of your beer because your hands are shaking so from the connection you feel to the vocalist–and to the scene itself. You want to crawl inside the words and make your home there. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve never loved music.

Which is not to say that the movie isn’t beautifully made (the style did remind me of the music video’s Corbijn directs for the band Depeche Mode), that there isn’t art there. The actors performances were amazing all in all–the stand out performance being that of young British new comer Sam Riley, with a surprising star turn from German actress Alexandra Marie Lara, playing Ian Curtis’ lover. More over, the bare bones script did convey the resigned angst particular to that part of England. I did however expect more depth. The film presents a curious lack of insight into both Ian’s writing process and the group dynamic. I’m sure I’m not alone in that I expected a birds eye view of how the band formed and how they put together their concepts—for example the whole business man refugee look they all seemed comfortable with—was that contrived or organic? As far as their place in music history– did they know or feel that they were the start of the whole post-punk movement? These are questions audiences prerfer to have answered rather then ignored in a biopic.

Another unplundered subject is that of infulences–although some are strongly hinted at. In Twenty-Four Hour Party People Curtis talks about David Bowie’s music not being concrete, saying it was good in all, but in the end what reality did it reflect and was its’ purprose? Yet I can’t help but think of Bowie when I hear Curtis’ strident voice imploring us to ignore harsh reality and “Dance, dance dance to the radio!” repeating the refrain until it becomes a frenzied call to rebellion, to nihilism. This makes me think that they owed David Bowie some gratitude, because without his music they would have had nothing to rebel against musically.

Joy Division created music that reflected their own reality, that said something about the lives they were living and the way they saw the world. You could say the movie succeeded in presenting that viewpoint to some degree in showing the lives of the band members exactly as they were without frills– and you would be half right. However, if you said that the film provided any real insight into those lives you would  be half wrong—there seemed to this reviewer to be no meaning to any of it. I  am left wondering whether that wasn’t Corbijn’s point–that in the end nothing means anything. Nihilism is alive and well, and Joy Division will remain the kings of the sullen. How stark! How utterly Joy Division!