Too often, musician biopics are repetitive and overly
reverent, full of rise and fall inevitabilities and unimaginative,
fashion-perfect historical recreations. Control, the
much-talked-about Ian Curtis story, manages to carve out a path away
from the thick of its crowded genre with an unselfconsciously stylized
look and comparatively slow action.
More obsessed with mood than factual realism, Control is
literally a photographer’s film: Director Anton Corbijn famously
photographed Curtis’ band Joy Division in the late ’70s, helping to
jumpstart a career that eventually led to directing music videos.
Control is Corbijn’s first feature film, and he’s keeping his
cards close to his chest with familiar subject matter.
Based on the memoir of Curtis’ widow, Deborah Curtis’ Touching
From A Distance, the film is surprisingly lacking in sympathy
towards its alleged heroine (played here by Samantha Morton), who was
cruelly neglected during her marriage to Curtis (Sam Riley), as was
their daughter. The troubled, epileptic Curtis is not granted the favor
of having his warts disguised, but the audience is made to love him
despite his inadequacies and pathetic inability to resolve his
relationships with his wife and ill-at-ease mistress Annik
Honoré (Alexandra Maria Lara). Curtis’ emotional distance is
echoed in Control, which does not have an immediately striking
emotional impact, but rather a lingering, haunting effect.
Perhaps Corbijn’s greatest success in adapting Curtis’ story to film
is in Control‘s stylistic similarity to Joy Division’s music,
which on the surface is stubbornly simplistic yet moodily compelling.
Likewise, the film’s look is stark and almost old fashioned, but
quietly, darkly powerful. Shot in black and white, the surprisingly
everyman events of Curtis’ life are both the perfect backdrop for and
seemingly disconnected from his music. The ultimate effect is a bit
cold; compared to the all-together-now power of garden-variety music
movies, the songs of Control, of Joy Division, are all the more
isolating and queasy. Which could not be more appropriate.