European Films

Dutch star photographer and music video director Anton Corbijn debuts as a feature film director with Control, a composed biopic of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, photographed in an otherworldly black-and-white. The title of the film about the talented English musician who committed suicide at 23 seems significant, since it not only refers to the Joy Division song She’s lost control but also (note the omission of the negative) to Corbijn’s approach to the material, though the film does have some trouble taking off before finally finding its way to a haunting conclusion. Fans of post-punk music and bleak UK arthouse films will be Control’s main audience and they should be aware that Control deserves to be seen on as big a screen as possible.

The film stars impressive newcomer Sam Riley as Ian Curtis, a youngster from the Greater Manchester in the late 1970s who was one of the founding members of what would become the post-punk band Joy Division. In the space of a couple of years, the rockers became the voice of a generation, until just before their first US tour Curtis took his own life, leaving behind a daughter and his young wife Deborah, whose biography was used by screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh as the basis for the film.

Though set in an environment of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, Control largely avoids telling a story we have seen countless times before, and this does not only have to do with its immaculately composed, moody and atmospheric cinematography (courtesy of Martin Ruhe) but also with its mise-en-scene and narrative build-up. Suicide is clearly the end of Curtis’s story, though Greenhalgh and Corbijn never use it as an excuse to fashion a didactic biopic on what dangers in the world of fame and fortune and celebrity excess exactly led to this tragic decision.

Instead, they sketch a portrait of a young lad who struggles not only with his increasingly frequent attacks of epilepsy but also with the difficult act of balancing the requirements of his job, his family life with his wife (played by Samantha Morton from In America) and daughter and his carnal and intellectual desires, who lead him in the direction of Belgian journalist Annik (Alexandra Maria Lara from Der Untergang, excellent) rather than homewards.

It is unclear at first where the film is headed and what exactly the main interest of the narrative is, which makes the earlier sections of the film feel unfocussed, though the concert scenes (convincingly played by the actors themselves) convincingly show the Joy Division men in their element. Nevertheless, the other band members are but outlines, and even his wife remains a sketchy creation (though she is phenomenally played by a too-old looking Morton).

As Control wears on, however and the film zooms in on the frontman of the band, it becomes increasingly clear that it is Curtis who is the outsider who has difficulties being understood by himself and by others. This makes his deeper connection with Annik, someone he cannot have, so much more tragic, giving the film a clearer focus as it spirals out of control and towards its inevitable conclusion. 

Corbijn’s musical biopic is thus quite unusual in that its focus is not on the music or on the entourage, fame and gossip-worthy escapades. Instead, it convincingly portrays a sincere and honest early twenty-something’s attempt to make sense of his own life only to find that maybe it does not have any.