1979 was the best year in the history of alternative music. It was the zenith of postpunk, the genre most important to the independent music being produced today. It was the year of Unknown Pleasures.
Control, released in 2007, is a film – biopic? maybe – by first-time filmmaker Anton Corbijn – rock photographer? maybe – about the man behind and full of Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.
It’s not a film for non-fans. There’s no path within it to access the band’s importance if you don’t already know it, no reason for your heart to skip a beat at mention of The Factory if you didn’t grow up, like me, sustaining yourself in all the dark joys of its output.
But it does depict, honestly, the extremely rapid rise and fall of a man, Ian Curtis.
This is a man who was, briefly, a social worker. This is a man who was, briefly, a husband and father. This is a man who was, briefly, an epileptic, crippled by the fear he may become worse – that he may, in no uncertain terms, lose control. This is a man, who, out of nowhere, presumably, and quite literally, changed the face of rock ‘n’ roll.
In Control, Curtis comes off as a bit of a psychopath in the jump-cut scenes of his early days and courtship with soon-to-be wife Debbie, who, to my amazement after watching, had quite a large role in its production. It’s jarring, even if I divorce the part of myself that’s a fan of Joy Division (and its later incarnation, New Order, admittedly) and cuddle up to the part that just wants to watch a good movie – one that’s tragic, sure, but tragically beautiful. Instead what I get in Control is an archetype of miscreant man – selfish adulterer trapped in his own head.
I glorify Curtis, I know, because I love his music. And what Control gives, in its beautiful and stark black and white, to its credit, is a portrait of how he actually was – a flawed, talented, Wordsworth-loving human being, never a rock star. And it is for the best, ultimately, for Hollywood needs another glorified depiction of mental illness like all its audience members need a hole in the head.
But would it be so much to ask of a piece of art independent of its subject matter to have an appeal to its main focus – an emotional relatability behind the pathos to which Curtis eventually succumbs? I guess for Corbijn – ironically a fanboy before such a thing existed – it is. Instead what we get is a portrait of a man growing up to become more and more of a child.
We see Curtis get high with a friend, we see Curtis apply makeup and listen to his hero, Bowie; we see Curtis review the album art for Joy Division’s debut, which we learn he paid £400 to record, right before he told Debbie “let’s have a baby.” We see Curtis, apparently in London for the first time, spit out a mid-bridge section of the game-changing, life-altering, all-the-superlatives-you-could-think-of closer to Unknown Pleasures, “I Remember Nothing.”
We don’t see, quite, how he goes from bare-chested record consumer in his parents’ Greater Manchester flat in 1973 to the great contributor to modern rock (and pop, for god’s sake, let’s just admit it – Peter “Hooky” Hook’s bass contribution is everywhere). Again, if we don’t yet know why we should give a shit about the life of Ian Curtis, we get no clues.
We do see the beginning of the end of Curtis as a man: The epilepsy he was so afraid to surrender to, the affair with Belgian hobby-journalist Annik Honore (the extremely beautiful and extremely promising – where has she been since 2007? – Alexandra Maria Lara), the “Love Will Tear Us Apart” lyrics set to the resounding themes of divorce and death.
I guess Control isn’t a biopic. It’s a film about Curtis’ suicide.
Curtis hanged himself in May 1980, in the house – where Control, amazingly, actually filmed – he occupied with his very much estranged wife and baby daughter, at age 23, no older than I am today.
What Control gets right is the music. And I don’t just say that as a fan of Joy Division, I say that as a fan of rock music. The concert material, which makes up the bulk of Control and its most moving moments, a bit sadly, is all actually recorded live, by the actors. It would have been easy to film syncing, but, amazingly, the actors picked up the instruments and recorded the material raw. The result is that we see a group of pretenders actually join up in the togetherness that, despite whatever flaw that ultimately tears them apart, joins a band as a group of humans seeking love. It’s to Corbijn’s credit that he allowed this to happen – it wasn’t originally intended – and to the actors’ credit that it saved an otherwise mediocre film.
Sam Riley gets Curtis right – as much as I’m annoyed with the writing of an ultimately selfish and unlovable man, Riley devotes all his emotion and physicality to depict the fitful (in more ways than one) man. Again, he is as he is – as he was. The singer-at-his-heart Riley gives a performance that’s as wonderfully claustrophobic, acidic and tragically beautiful as Curtis’ music, throwing his gangly frame into a performance that outshines the equally annoyingly passive victim, the better-known Samantha Morton as his absurdly suffering wife.
We, as an audience, are most on Curtis’ side as Riley awkwardly dances to his music and belts out, winningly, the lyrics we see in the most touching moments of Control we see he gives so, so, so much to deliver.
Mortison, as is fated, it seems, does ultimately give the most human performance in screaming, at the very end of Control, the "Can anybody help me?!" with her baby daughter, after Curtis' death, extolling the visceral grief of suicide and helplessness.
Knowing as we do how the film will end, I’ll argue its most poignant moment comes as bassist Peter Hook (played wonderfully sarcastic by the equally promising Joe Anderson) teases the fragile Curtis following an epileptic fit that forces him prematurely off stage.
“Right, who won the fight, then, Ian or Ian?” He says of the “fight” of Curtis’ seizure.
That’s not all the options. When genius enters the bloody struggle to make art, it’s only ever the audience that wins.
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