Underwhelming...

Rating: 4/10 (12 August 2018)

I started listening to Joy Division very recently and after liking a lot of their songs and doing a lot of reading about the band and Ian Curtis, I thought it would be a good idea to give this movie a watch, since the band had such a low life span and Ian Curtis was a very interesting character.
The movie described Ian Curtis as "sad", "quiet", and an "outcast", and I'm sure in real life he was, but in the movie Curtis just acts like a regular guy, it isn't really until he gets on stage and starts performing when Sam Riley starts to transform himself into Curtis with his strange dancing and awkward eye movements. I don't necessarily think this is Sam Riley's fault, maybe the director should take the blame for that, it would've been really nice to see him act more like an outsider that had a hard time fitting in with the rest of the band and society. Another glaring issue I had was that I felt absolutely no sympathy for Ian Curtis during this movie, he marries his brothers girlfriend, has a child with her, and then cheats on her, and then starts to get angry with her for wanting a divorce because he's having an affair. If anything I felt more sympathy for Debbie than Ian, she's constantly making tea for him and taking care of their child but Ian just acts like a total jackass and has a bunch of seizures. I don't know if this was on purpose? I don't remember hearing that Ian Curtis was a jerk in real life but maybe he was? This combined with him not really acting like a sad outcast at all just makes the movie feel kind of phony to me.
The length of the movie is perfect, I usually feel like a lot of movies I watch go on for a bit too long, but the length wasn't an issue at all for me-- What was an issue was how they structured the movie within the running time, they should've focused a lot more on how Ian Curtis joined the band, and them growing together, but there's barely any of that in the movie which is a shame because a lot of the time that's the most interesting part of a rock band.
The main things that I enjoyed were the visuals, there were a lot of great shots that mix in perfectly with the black and white, also I love the fact that the movie is in black and white since almost every image of the band and Ian Curtis that you can find is in black and white. A lot of the acting was great but like I said earlier I think the main issue might've been directing and writing. Another thing I enjoyed were the live performances, mainly since this is really the only time in the movie where I felt like Sam Riley was acting like Ian Curtis, and they definitely did a good job of mirroring the few live performances of Joy Division that are on video.
In conclusion I was a bit underwhelmed with the movie, if you're a fan of Joy Division you've probably already watched it, and if you're not a fan of Joy Division then there's not really any reason to watch it.