"Isolation"

Rating: 7/10 (28 October 2010)

Like many an immortalised front-man before him, the jury may remain out on Ian Curtis's talent (he even sounds like a certain Jim Morrison when he sings), but there's no denying that he was a uniquely troubled thinker. Besides, how are we to know what musical riches he may have mined, if he'd the chance to grow into a man?
Control is sad, yes. But it is also a call to compassion, informing us that there is a wealth of love in the wildest heart.
Reducing the supporting cast to sketched ciphers serves to enhance the sense of Curtis's isolation. The one other character with real flesh is Debbie, his wife, skilfully played by Samantha Morton as endlessly beaming yet bereft, with an Ian-shaped hole in her soul which will never fully be filled.
Real-life singer Sam Riley's performance is impressive precisely because he doesn't strive to impress; rather, he is a clenched fist of internal turmoil. We first witness his bleak romanticism as he quotes Wordsworth, gazing from a window into the middle Macclesfield distance. A few short years later Debbie is confronting him about his infidelity, and his eyes are on his feet, and he's quoting nothing, not even himself, as if the elusiveness that was once his allure has become his mind's ball-and-chain.
In pristine monochrome, the film portrays the brief life of a promising urban poet, from Bowie beginnings to an Iggy Pop end, via the Sex Pistols; and so, far from the usual fill-the-blanks perfunctory closing caption, the final reminder that Curtis was only 23 when he died hits us like a punch to the heart.