P***ed me off

Rating: Null/10 (7 October 2007)

I just saw it. I was equally saddened and angered by it. It is an unfair portrayal of Ian Curtis and an unrealistic one of everybody around him. Style/photography was good and music was brilliant, of course. But as biographies go, this is a stinker. The dead demand our respect and fairness because they cannot speak for themselves.
I can elaborate. In brief. Black and white for realism is, well, fair enough, but some realism would also help. Throughout the film the one guy who comes across as a morose arse (to the ignorant) is Ian Curtis. Everybody else is loving/caring/friendly/pat on the back jolly life-loving people and what is wrong with Ian unable to cope with all this love and attention? Nobody will ever know what happened between the late Ian Curtis and his widow. But a film supposedly on a dead music legend, which is based mostly -if not solely- on his, well, it's fair to say "scorned" widow's book is doing neither of them any justice.
I saw some romance (they were, let's face it, kids) and living in boring Macclesfield but I hardly saw anything about the way the band came together and how they interacted and developed musically. Which is, basically, what I expected, a bit. And not to mention aspects of peoples' relationships that have been widely "speculated" but were never even mentioned. But if the people involved are alive, I suppose telling is gossip and bad manners.
And then he kills himself. I cried mostly because Mr Curtis deserved better. I'll say it again: the beautiful dead deserve our respect and fairness.