Beautifully tragic

Rating: 8/10 (23 October 2007)

In the 80s I was as rabid a Joy Division fan as there ever was. I owned their complete discography going back to their Warsaw days, including rare bootlegs and limited pressings given away in British music magazines. I was also utterly floored upon hearing the news that lead singer Ian Curtis had committed suicide, hanging himself on the eve of the band's scheduled departure on what would surely have been a ground breaking US tour. So it goes without saying that had director Anton Corbijn's biopic Control been released back then, I would have flocked to it as only a fan can do and likely loathed it for peeling away the veneer of myth surrounding the singer.
Jump ahead 27 years and time has proved to be a great leveler. The fan-boy enchantment I once held for the group has been replaced by a continued respect for their music, and a more realistic view of the man who capitulated to his inner fears and demons, and left behind a loving wife and young daughter at the precise moment when a world of opportunity was about to open.
Corbijn's Control manages to capture that disconnect between the mythic Ian Curtis of fandom, and the real man who repeatedly strayed from the medication prescribed to control his epilepsy, turned his back on a devoted wife, and ultimately robbed his band-mates of what should have been their shining moment.
Based on "Touching from a Distance", Deborah Curtis' 1995 account of their marriage, Control's centerpiece is the performance of Sam Riley, who brings to the role such an uncanny resemblance to Curtis that he almost appears to have been cloned. Curtis' on-stage mannerisms, tics and quirks, all of which can still be viewed thanks to YouTube, are all there. So is the music, but only as a backdrop to the actual story. Corbijn, who was initially reluctant to helm this project for fear his reputation as a rock video director would unfairly label the movie, casts the story in the fitting downbeat mood it demands. Filmed in gritty black and white, the film captures the bleakness of northern England and, in its own strange way, forces viewers to narrow their focus on the story being played out rather than being enchanted by the music scene of the day.
It follows Curtis' life from pre-band years spent working in an employment office and aiding seniors at a nursing home, through his teenage marriage to Deborah and the birth of their daughter a few years later, to Joy Division's sometimes turbulent halcyon days with Manchester's Factory Records - it's all there if you've followed the band's story, and therein lies the movie's only problem. I'm not sure how well Control would play out to anyone who wasn't a fan. It's not that the movie requires the viewer to possess background knowledge to fill in the gaps, because it doesn't, but its impact and magnitude of the tragedy wrought by his death likely won't be the same. In fact, Control is yet another testimony to the breadth of stupidity and selfishness of Curtis' suicide as Deborah's loving book upon which it's based, as well as her assuming the mantle of the film's co-producer, continue to serve as an indicator of her love for the man who was conflicted in his emotions for her and ultimately took the poetic coward's way out of his family's life.
Much in the way Curtis' band-mates managed to find closure by morphing into New Order, Control provides Deborah Curtis and Ian's legion of fans a way to look back in silence and walk away, even if it leaves you shaking your head at a life, love, and opportunities lost.