He’s lost control

“It’s getting faster, moving faster now, it’s getting out of hand…”
—Joy Division, “Disorder”

Forget calling it a movie, or even a film, Anton Corbijn’s biopic about the life and death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis is a work of art and history.

Known to most Joy Division fans as the photographer behind the most iconic images of the Manchester quartet, Corbijn has produced a masterpiece in his very first feature. Filmed entirely in black and white— which nicely captures the essence of Joy Division and late 1970s Manchester— each shot is immaculately framed, as if Corbijn’s old photographs have been brought to life.

As one of the pioneers of the post-punk movement—and the lead singer in one of the most uniquesounding bands in the history of rock music—many people wonder why Curtis would kill himself at the young age of 23, on the eve of Joy Division’s first U.S. tour. The mission of Control seems to be to explain his final, desperate action. As Corbijn put it, speaking before a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, “It’s about a man who follows his dreams and ends up in a very unhappy place.”

Control begins with Curtis (played by unknown Sam Riley) as a 17-yearold. Here he seems like a different person: hopeful, ambitious, sporting a wide grin as he listens to David Bowie records, spouting Wordsworth to impress his mate’s girlfriend. Later he meets Peter Hook (Joe Anderson), Bernard Sumner (James Anthony Pearson), and Stephen Morris (Harry Treadaway)—the trio who, with Curtis, would form Joy Division, and after his death, become ’80s superstars New Order—and offers to join their then “pretty shit” band.

Curtis also gets married. He and his wife, Deborah (Samantha Morton) are both still teenagers when they tie the knot. At the same time, Joy Division’s star is beginning to rise. The band hires a manager, Rob Gretton (Toby Kebbell), who gets them signed to Factory Records. Factory’s head, Tony Wilson (Craig Parkinson), is also a British TV presenter and features the band on his now-famous program So It Goes.

As the band starts to tour, Curtis has his first epileptic seizure. Doctors back in Manchester put him on a cocktail of drugs that produce a nightmarish list of side effects (vomiting, acne, swelling of the gums) and tell him to avoid late nights and alcohol (yeah, right). It’s also around this time that Curtis—still in his early twenties—becomes the father of a baby girl named Natalie. His constant touring and withdrawn personality begin to weigh on Deborah— she wants a stable life and a husband who isn’t up all night or on the road.

While on tour, he begins an affair with a Belgian reporter named Annik, with whom he realizes that his marriage to Deborah was a mistake. As seizures continue to invade his life (he even has one on stage), he begins to emotionally unravel, unable or unwilling to perform. “They don’t understand how much I give, and how it affects me,” he writes in a letter to Annik. All of this begins to tear Curtis apart.

Writer Matt Greenhalgh—who used Deborah Curtis’s memoir Touching From a Distance as a reference— does a great job of showing how Curtis—pulled apart in four directions by band, wife, illness, and mistress—finally loses control.

The core cast of Control is superb at recreating their characters, especially Riley—who looks, sounds, and acts just like Curtis—and Toby Kebbell, who is hilarious as Joy Division’s highly motivated yet horribly crass manager.

Another impressive feature is that all the live shots of Joy Division playing are accompanied by versions of the songs recorded by the actors themselves. While this prospect may initially frighten Joy Division purists (myself included), the renditions are superb. Versions of “Transmission,” “Disorder,” and “She’s Lost Control” sound like raw re-mastered reels rescued from Martin Hannett’s attic.

In short, Control is an incredibly fitting elegy for Curtis—a must-see for any fan of rock music—and is easily the best British film of 2007.

Control is currently in limited release.