Flak Magazine: Review of Control, 11-21-07

Even before settling into the multiplex's stadium seating, I was skeptical that an Ian Curtis biopic was what my Joy Division-craving heart was asking for. For anyone familiar with it, the dramatic arc of this post-punk singer's story is only a little more dynamic than continental drift. It's also difficult to imagine how this band's singularity, whose image was so successfully managed through some of the most striking sleeve art of the late 1970s, could survive the necessary compromises of movie making.

So it's a relief that Control is as good as it is. Besides handling its own baggage, the film is successful at the things other biopics often mess up; it places a strong emphasis on character rather than straining to reach each mark on a timeline.

The film tells the story of a sort of post-punk Young Werther (Sam Riley, in an elegant performance) who wishes for a life more extraordinary than his own. Placed on the David Bowie scale, Ian craves an existence closer in appearance to Ziggy Stardust, a glamorous fabrication, than to David Jones, the awful truth. Ian achieves his own approximation of Ziggy's rise with the support of an idolizing wife (Samantha Morton, who does a spectacular job pretending to be bland) and a band made up of two blokes (Joe Anderson and Harry Treadaway) and a Nazi-fixated priss (James Anthony Pearson), only to shudder violently at the pressures that come with being extraordinary.

Having turned down the directorial job several times before finally accepting, Anton Corbijn must have seen the potential pitfalls of this story which begins in the doldrums and proceeds towards deeper though sexier doldrums (Alexandra Maria Lara as Ian's Belgian lover). Corbijn is one of the most distinctive celebrity photographers this side of Anne Leibovitz. But while Leibovitz is closely associated with a more literate and skewered take on glamour, Corbijn's look recalls the less verbal aspects of 60's arthouse cinema: the landscapes Michelangelo Antonioni, the missed glances of Robert Bresson. Promisingly cinematic? Sure. But maybe such pretensions are best kept within the contraints of the music videos he's shot for U2, Nirvana and, most frequently, Depeche Mode.

Considering Corbijn's professed love of Joy Division (a first listen to Unknown Pleasures, the band's debut album, prompted his move from his native Holland to England when he was 24, where within weeks of his arrival he had taken the band's most enduring photos), the reasons he set his reservations aside are not only tactical but personal, though entering the theater I was curious to find out which one the ratio would favor.

The answer arrives soon enough as the film opens in the drab residential setting of Macclesfield, England, 1973. With a decidedly flat image of 16 year-old Ian, the cinematography looks more like BBC television than the grand European cinema of this period. The lighting robs the black and white photography of the richness that Corbijn used to make so many alternative rock bands seem fascinating. Right out of the canister it's clear: with this movie, Corbijn is not assembling an expensive portfolio. He's telling a story and serving Joy Division's legacy, in all its Mancunian dreariness.

The real achievement of the film, however, is in the way this legacy is nestled near to the ground for fans of a younger generation's easy access, not hoisted tactlessly in the air. The closest we get to a hackneyed sequence showing Ian finding his creative strength is a scene where he is blocked, only capable of scrawling the words "she lost control," after meeting an epileptic girl who inspires the song. Like Joy Division's music, it's the paradoxical sum of what the film leaves out that makes it work.

One perfectly conceived and executed scene demonstrates this economy. It runs for two minutes and is set at a Sex Pistols' show in Manchester in 1976, where Joy Division formed. Ian approaches and impresses his intensity upon three members of the local band Stiff Kittens (our two blokes and one priss). The Pistol's show itself plays in a single slow tracking shot which passes several dozen convulsing concertgoers, eventually settling on Ian and his wife Debbie. In their stillness, the dowdy couple stand out from the naff remnants of Glam Rock surrounding them. There's a look of awe and deep concentration on Ian's face. After the show, Ian visits Stiff Kittens again, offering to replace their singer. It's up to us to piece together the significance of this move.

— Andrew Stout (andrewstout at gmail dot com)