Anton Corbijn's magnum opus says it all: he has kept control!

Rating: 9/10 (24 April 2010)

As a keen music lover I had to discover this gem made by a celebrated photograph in the history of rock: he made photographs of Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart and was responsible for the package of R.E.M.'s Automatic For The People (1992). Without mentioning the remarkable clips he shot for Depeche Mode (see the stunning video of Enjoy The Silence). But above all Anton Corbijn knew very well the members of Joy Division during their short lifetime so he was THE man to shoot their story and the result is just terrific. Its award of the Golden Camera at the festival of Cannes in 2007 was highly deserved.
Corbijn shot almost everything that made Joy Division unique in the history of rock and their story is a perfect snapshot of the musical climate of that time. The end of the seventies saw the explosion of punk and new wave.
But is it righteous to say that Corbijn was merely interested in the history of the band? Not really. Of course, sequences dealing with them abound and they're unforgettable. See the admirable sequences dealing with the recording of Closer (1980) and the line pronounced by maverick producer Martin Hannett: "Ian, you're a genius" or the concerts during which epilepsy seizures Ian and makes him plunge into despair. But Corbijn was mostly interested in the history of the leader of Joy Division. In a way, his fate is comparable to Kurt Cobain's: both were married and became fathers too soon. Both were devastated by success. But unlike Nirvana's leader, Curtis was torn between his love for his wife and his mistress and couldn't deal with this forbidden love. Furthermore, as it was written before, his epilepsy seizures made him vulnerable and frail making his suicide predictable. All of this is shot in a rigorous (the listening of Iggy Pop's The Idiot, 1977 before the act...) and especially discreet manner so that we can fully sympathize with Ian Curtis' plight. And it works for the last minutes are very harrowing. I must say I shed a tear at that time of the film.
Then Corbijn didn't forget his science of photography during the making of his film for several shots are carefully filmed making them look like photographs. And needless to say that the actor acting Curtis is highly convincing, just like the rest of the cast.
In the end, I can't really write faults about a highly emotive biopic and when a style is perfectly adapted to a type of story, it can work wonders unlike the failed biopic about Serge Gainsbourg released in January 2010.