control

[KLAXXON]

An amazing film about the life of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, whose personal troubles led him to commit suicide at the age of 23; Control tells Curtis’ story from his childhood days in 1973 right through to his death in 1980. A brilliant drama with standout performances from Samantha Morton and Sam Riley, the film is gripping, funky and stylish.

This film is great. If you’re looking for a good, solid British drama that isn’t yet another Lock Stock clone and just so happens to be based on a true story…then this is the film for you. First time director Anton Corbijn has taken the autobiography ‘Touching from a Distance’ written by Deborah Curtis, Ian’s widowed wife, and (with the help of some talented writers), has masterfully turned it into this film which looks so good, it could almost be a work of art.

Shot completely in black and white, this film has a real classic indie quality to it. It’s almost like a window in the past. Every camera shot has been setup to support the ‘mood of the moment’ and it is really like the viewer has stepped back in time to the mid – late seventies. Within minutes, you will see why Control has been nominated and won so many awards.

Anton Corbijn’s film starts in 1973, when Ian Curtis (Sam Riley) is still at school. It shows him as a dreamer, a David Bowie fan and a fan of all things to do with the Manchester Music scene. He meets Deborah (Samantha Morton), and the two of them get married at a very young age. Straight away, Ian comes across as a poet – very artistic, but also very troubled. It is clear that married life may not be the right thing for him as he is a dreamer – distant but with a sensitive side.

Curtis famously became inspired to become a singer when he saw a Sex Pistol’s concert; the film shows this and how he teams up with his long term friends Peter Hook (Joe Anderson), Bernard Sumner (James Anthony Pearson) and Stephen Morris (Harry Treadaway) to form a band. The film shows how the group become involved with the host of Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ Tony Wilson (Craig Parkinson), acquire a new manager Rob Gretton (Toby Kebbell) and ultimately rise to stardom.

There’s more to this film than Joy Division though as Control burrows deep beneath Curtis’ skin and shows how the pressures of his life in music and being married at such a young age affected him. It shows Curtis’s biggest curse – epilepsy, his bouts of depression and his fascination and love for a beautiful and sophisticated amateur journalist Annik (Alexandra Maria Lara). Sam Riley’s performance is outstanding and deserving of praise and awards. He completely transforms himself into the character of Ian Curtis and is entirely convincing in the role.

Samantha Morton is wonderful as Deborah, Ian’s loving wife, who is completely unprepared for the transformation of her sweetheart from a sweet, adoring teenager into an ambitious star who is the object of many-an-affection.

It’s a sad story but rarely depressing with a terrific soundtrack. It celebrates Ian Curtis’ life and presents what resembles a genuinely honest view of the man who had a massive effect on the indie music scene.

Much of this honesty is probably down to the fact that director Anton Corbijn knew the band back in the day, he was a key photographer of them then and now, with this film, he honours Curtis and pays tribute to him and his genius. A fantastic film


In the late ’70s, working-class benefits officer Ian Curtis (Riley) joins Manchester rock band Joy Division. After marrying Deborah (Morton), Curtis is diagnosed with epilepsy and finds the pressure of touring, and later success, increasingly hard to handle.


The kitchen-sink drama is a genre that the British film industry hasn’t returned to in quite a while. One could argue that Ken Loach’s wonderful Sweet Sixteen, despite its modern-day trimmings (heroin, knife crime), was its last screen incarnation, but despite its roots in biography and the not-so-’60s past, Anton Corbijn’s Control is a natural successor to the likes of Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, A Taste Of Honey and, in particular, Billy Liar. And it’s not simply a question of film stock and setting; yes, Control is shot in crisp monochrome and takes place in a defiantly working-class Northern setting, but like the best kitchen-sink dramas it’s a story about people trapped, and defined by their inability to break free.

Just as those films made stars of their young leads - Albert Finney, Rita Tushingham and Tom Courtenay respectively - so Control acts as an impressive calling card for its star, newcomer Sam Riley. Riley has the unenviable task of carrying a story that will be familiar even to those with just a passing knowledge of Joy Division’s history: on the eve of the band’s first trip to America, Curtis hanged himself in the pantry of the terraced house he shared with his wife Deborah (played here, well and unfussily, by Morton).

But if you’re expecting this to be a bathetic The Doors, delving into the psyche of a troubled musician, you’ll be surprised. It doesn’t even matter much if you don’t know your Joy Division from your Kylie Minogue - Corbijn’s film is really just an account of Curtis’ short but influential life, reclaiming him from the myth-makers who see him as a trench-coated visionary and reminding us that here, at 23, was a kid who married too young, was likely failed by the NHS and struggled with the guilt of infidelity. And more than simply restoring Curtis’ humanity, Corbijn leavens his tale with a rich and unlikely seam of dry humour that counters the darkness of his moods.

Evidence of Corbijn’s background as a photographer rather than a filmmaker is obvious, with Curtis framed against cobbled streets, high-rise flats and rows and rows of two-up-two-downs. Though some may find the opening scenes of the young Curtis finding his muse a bit of drag, Control has a building energy that finds its fullest expression when Joy Division finally perform. Playing live rather than miming, the cast bring the band’s jarring guitar sound vividly to life, but, again, Riley is the standout, capturing Curtis’ whirling-dervish drummer-boy dance moves with an eerie intensity.
If there’s a complaint to be made, it could be that Corbijn is so involved with his leading man - his subject, if you will - that nobody else really gets a look in. Similarly, Corbijn never really engages with whatever it was that prompted Joy Division to fashion such an economic, incisive sound so soon after the angry, messy rumblings of punk.

But these are minor problems with a film that does everything it otherwise sets out to do, sidestepping the traditional pitfalls of the usual rock biopic. Indeed, the very best rock movies are hardly about rock music at all, and in this respect Control is up there with Performance and Last Days.


A film about creative and emotional burn-out that says more about the fragility of the soul than any montage of ticket sales and ‘sold out’ signs could ever muster.

Samantha Morton ...  Deborah Curtis
Sam Riley ...  Ian Curtis
Alexandra Maria Lara ...  Annik Honoré
Joe Anderson ...  Peter Hook
Toby Kebbell ...  Rob Gretton
Craig Parkinson ...  Tony Wilson
James Anthony Pearson ...  Bernard Sumner
Harry Treadaway ...  Stephen Morris
Andrew Sheridan ...  Terry Mason
Robert Shelly ...  Twinny
Matthew McNulty ...  Nick Jackson
Ben Naylor ...  Martin Hannett
Herbert Grönemeyer ...  Public GP
Nigel Harris ...  Tramp
Nicola Harrison ...  Corrine Lewis
Tim Plester ...  Earnest Richards


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