CONTROL
Yes, we’ve bitched about biopics here before – but when the subject is Ian Curtis of Joy Division, who sound as good now as they ever did? When it’s the first feature by famous rock-photographer and film clip auteur Anton Corbijn? Fingers were crossed.
CONTROL looks gorgeous. Soft black and white, beautifully framed, never over-composed. The performances are uniformly strong, too: Samatha Morton rarely slips into cinematic ‘poor wife’ chestnuts and newcomer Sam Riley slam-dunks Curtis’ particular brand of lost and lonely. And the score is by New Order, for god's sake!
So what went wrong? Too much of CONTROL plays like the Ian Curtis wikipedia page come to life, with unforgivably clumsy stabs at tragic foreshadowing and first-year-creative-writing-class symbolism. (Picture the screenwriter: “Look, he’s singing ‘Isolation’… while isolated in a sound-proof booth! I just got chills!”)
Depression is a difficult emotion to structure a story around, because it doesn’t move; it sits awfully, horribly still. There’s a stretch in the middle of the film where the biopic clichés fall away and everything – silences, soundtrack, photography, performances – come together to break your heart. It’s a shame it doesn’t last longer.
Format: Cinema
Mood: Epic
Keywords: Ian Curtis, Joy Division, Anton Corbijn
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