Control is a film about the brief, brilliant career of Joy Division singer and lyricist Ian Curtis. The film, which is shot in black and white, also manages to capture the essence of an exhilarating moment in contemporary music -- not necessarily what you'd expect in a basic tragedy.
The story begins in Macclesfield, England, in 1973, when Curtis (Sam Riley) is still an adolescent, listening to Bowie and writing poetry.
Early on, he falls in love with a buddy's girlfriend, Debbie (Samantha Morton) and they marry young.
Curtis becomes lead singer for a band called Warsaw, more or less by chance, and then everyone gets serious after seeing the Sex Pistols perform in Manchester around 1976. The band changes its name to Joy Division, the guys play local gigs, success begins to grow and eventually a recording contract with Factory Records comes along.
Curtis, meanwhile, has had an epileptic seizure on stage, and managing his own health becomes an issue. He is prescribed several heavy duty drugs for epilepsy, but they all have debilitating side effects.
And he and Debbie have a baby daughter. And he isn't earning much money. And just when it seems Curtis can't possibly handle anything more in his life, he falls in love with a Belgian journalist, Annik Honore (Alexandra Maria Lara). His universe seems to be rapidly spinning out of control. It's all upheaval, all the time, and life on the road contributes to Curtis' grand mal seizures becoming more frequent.
As the band's fortunes rise, Curtis' personal life begins to unravel and he never quite puts it back together again. His first suicide attempt, in April 1980, is written off as a drunken error.
He does better the next time.
Despite a crushing second hour that follows the decline and fall of Ian Curtis, Control is never less than completely engaging. The film is visually mesmerizing, and sequences of Curtis doing nothing but smoking a cigarette and thinking and looking out a window give the sense of living inside his thoughts -- and it's all ahead of him, anticipatory, thrilling. Until it isn't.
Morton is superb here, as usual, and Sam Riley is so good as Curtis that it's a bit scary. He looks like the late singer; he performs like the late singer in the in-concert scenes and he puts across Curtis' manic post-punk stage persona.
Control is set in England just before that country was transformed into Margaret Thatcher's England, and filmmaker Anton Corbijn gives his characters a sort of innocence and creative passion that would soon be replaced, in general, by the pursuit of money. Had he lived, Ian Curtis would now be middle aged and quite possibly organizing a Joy Division nostalgia tour.
Just a thought.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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