Sam Riley astonishes, and moody late 70s Manchester is convincing...

Rating: 8/10 (15 February 2010)

Control (2007)
The first thing that should strike someone familiar with Joy Division's music, and with movies about rock bands, is how low-key and unglamorous this film is. Instead of plowing into a bunch of music clips, or dwelling on drug use and brushes with early fame, Control focuses on the lead singer, the charismatic and troubled Ian Curtis. This is a movie about a bunch of ordinary seeming kids, each with their small quirks and sometimes rather small (but sufficient) talents, and about how they get through that first series of layers toward becoming a successful band. Shot in gorgeous, crisp black and white, and centered in a middle class Northwest England (greater Manchester) in the late 1970s, it is both serene and gloomy.
Sam Riley is undeniably the core of the movie as Curtis (the more famous Samantha Morton plays his wife well, but has a smaller role). We vaguely know what will happen by the end, so it doesn't just parade facts as the band wins fans and gets bigger gigs. It peers into the mind and actions of a gifted songwriter and idiosyncratic punk and post-punk performer. Riley manages to recreate the aura of Curtis, especially in these scenes early on where they are playing in obscure places with small crowds, and this is really hard to do, since pop music stars become legends in part because they have some special presence in the world, some quality that makes them stand out. But Riley manages even better to show the brooding, lyricist side of the singer. It's a must-see performance, subtle and convincing and singular.
Is this a way to learn something about Joy Division's music? Not really. And that's just as well. Go to iTunes for that (their first two albums are the core of it). The movie isn't about music, but about relevance, and how to take some ability and quiet drive and break out of the doldrums of life. It dips into the era with such believable and restrained simplicity it's a revelation. Yes, it sometimes flags, and sometimes seems to have only the one long, complicated thread, with a given outcome, and so it isn't an inventive, swirling work of fiction (the facts have it trapped) nor a masterpiece of ensemble acting (which it isn't trying to be). But it's about as good as movies about music and musicians get, and it's a beautiful, remarkable journey about one man caught up in it all, and in his own struggle for decency and significance.