I saw Control, Anton Corbijn's new movie about Ian Curtis and Joy Division, last week in London. I don't watch many movies, so I feel the need to review all the movies that I do see.
I'm not a huge Joy Division fan (outside the four or five songs that almost everyone likes), so I didn't know a whole lot about Ian Curtis going in, but was completely drawn in by Control. Corbijn shoots the movie in black and white, and the visuals are amazing throughout. It looks like it was made in the late 70s. Sam Riley is quite convincing as Ian Curtis, both in looks and singing. I had trouble thinking of Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash or Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, but Sam Riley seemed like Ian Curtis to me. His most famous pre-Curtis role was playing Mark E. Smith in 24 Hour Party People, which explained the meta-joke when his manager tells him that "things could be worse, you could be the singer for the Fall". That went completely over my head until I knew Sam's history.
Riley portrays Ian Curtis as a normal guy with problems instead of some mythical martyr. He led a fairly normal life before Joy Division, with a wife and a daughter and a job at the Macclesfield Employment Exchange. Most of Ian's problems started after he joined the band and their fame escalated: his marriage was falling apart, he was diagnosed with epilepsy and started suffering seizures on and offstage, it seemed like everything went wrong for Ian as Joy Division got more popular. Even knowing how the story ends, I found myself pulling for him to get it together before the end of the movie.
I'm more of a sound fan than a picture fan, so my favorite part of the movie was the musical performances. The actors performed all the music themselves, sounding like a fairly spot-on Joy Division tribute band. So much so that some people thought it was the real band. Someone at the U.S. distributor's office for Control apparently asked if Joy Division could reunite for the film's premier. Peter Hook replied "The last I heard, their lead singer was dead but I'll give them a ring and see if anything has changed."
I'm not a huge Joy Division fan (outside the four or five songs that almost everyone likes), so I didn't know a whole lot about Ian Curtis going in, but was completely drawn in by Control. Corbijn shoots the movie in black and white, and the visuals are amazing throughout. It looks like it was made in the late 70s. Sam Riley is quite convincing as Ian Curtis, both in looks and singing. I had trouble thinking of Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash or Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, but Sam Riley seemed like Ian Curtis to me. His most famous pre-Curtis role was playing Mark E. Smith in 24 Hour Party People, which explained the meta-joke when his manager tells him that "things could be worse, you could be the singer for the Fall". That went completely over my head until I knew Sam's history.
Riley portrays Ian Curtis as a normal guy with problems instead of some mythical martyr. He led a fairly normal life before Joy Division, with a wife and a daughter and a job at the Macclesfield Employment Exchange. Most of Ian's problems started after he joined the band and their fame escalated: his marriage was falling apart, he was diagnosed with epilepsy and started suffering seizures on and offstage, it seemed like everything went wrong for Ian as Joy Division got more popular. Even knowing how the story ends, I found myself pulling for him to get it together before the end of the movie.
I'm more of a sound fan than a picture fan, so my favorite part of the movie was the musical performances. The actors performed all the music themselves, sounding like a fairly spot-on Joy Division tribute band. So much so that some people thought it was the real band. Someone at the U.S. distributor's office for Control apparently asked if Joy Division could reunite for the film's premier. Peter Hook replied "The last I heard, their lead singer was dead but I'll give them a ring and see if anything has changed."
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