Haunting Cinema

Rating: 9/10 (20 December 2008)

The tragic life of Joy Division's Ian Curtis comes to life in the bleak black and white 'Control'. Anton Corbijn's debut film places a microscope over the singer's short life, and it's a perceptive and significant entry to the biopic cannon. Bolstered by a fantastic and even haunting performance from Sam Riley, 'Control' is a difficult but admirable effort to shed light on one man's mysterious life.
There's a quality to 'Control' that almost forces its viewer to watch from a distance, and I feel this was an intentional choice. Ian Curtis, by today's standards, would be labeled as one of those introspective emo boys. There seems to be a fiery passion underneath, but he's almost shut off to the rest of the world. Riley's tremendous performance at times comes off as frighteningly realistic, but through all his personal torment, he comes off as a distant and detached person who's difficult to read.
One may almost feel empathy for Curtis' situation in life. He is at once being pulled between two very different worlds. Life with his wife and daughter or a promising band on the brink of international stardom. The script, co-written by Ian's real-life wife Deborah Curtis, portrays the singer as an increasingly unhappy man. Trapped in a life he can't seem to escape either which way, a life he has no control over. His own selfishness and health complications hurt those who loved him most, and Samantha Morton's performance as Deborah is a painful and heartbreaking thing to watch.
Photographed in black and white, the absence of color seems fitting. 'Control' doesn't intend to explain or rationalize Ian's decisions in life, it is what it is. His eventual suicide at 23 is one that leaves us with a pang of emptiness but not surprise. 'Control' is a tragic story, and a profoundly difficult piece of work. It doesn't look for the light at the end of the tunnel, it's a picture that comes to a screeching halt as the life of another ends. There are no Hollywood fix-ups, no glamor.
It is such a realness that makes 'Control' difficult to judge. One knows after watching that they have witnessed something very special, no matter how brutal it may have been. Art isn't always beautiful, 'Control' certainly isn't. But it is art.
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