Control (2007)

this film misses the 2 most important parts of Ian Curtis's life: his profound and debilitating depression and the role Manchester played in his development.

the doc JOY DIVISION does much better in capturing Curtis and the band at their most honest.

CONTROL is clichéd and third-rate. it's a joy division movie with stock characters not real people and it could've been directed by a b-director like Taylor hackford. it's also way too family friendly and eager to please everybody: Ian's wife, Deborah; the band; Martin Hannett. much of the jokes and key moments of the film are taken directly from Michael Winterbottom's much better film 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE.

Curtis's daughter wrote a great assessment of the film in the Guardian... http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2181041,00.html

Fmovies: About a third of the way through watching Control, it occurred to me: if this film were about somebody who wasn't famous, it would be absolutely dull. As depicted in this film, Ian Curtis was a very uninteresting person. Besides being the lead singer of Joy Division (and I will take nothing away from the music) he did nothing extraordinary with his life. Nor was he an extraordinary person. He displayed no feats of courage, no wit, he didn't stand for anything, was indecisive, lacking in charm, passionless, an atrocious father, rarely smiled, and possessed no ambition. I can see why he killed himself.

So the question remains: why are we watching this film?

I have the feeling that there was a lot more to Ian Curtis than nice cheekbones, intense stage presence and epilepsy. And if not, then a point should be made of that. Is this the story of the shy kid who wanted to be David Bowie but then couldn't handle the fame? Was it just the pills that sent him spiraling? Is it a comment on just how normal he actually was? This film has no angle. The acting is excellent. The black and white photography is lovely. The sound design is superb. But all these components are masking the fact that this is simply an astonishingly banal script. There were scenes and dialogue that left me scratching my head, thinking why did we have that? It feels like a first draft. There is no drama in most scenes - for example, the exchanges Ian and Anook are incredibly lifeless.

In spite of all this, the film is utterly convincing. It's just also utterly uninspired. I think I will read a Curtis biography now and find out what really made him tick.

I read the reviews of this film and decided it was worth a punt. I have to say that although I was in Manchester during the 1970s I was not a fan of Punk music. This film is beautifully made - almost like a 1950/60s kitchen sink film of the gritty north (there are worse places than Macclesfield, believe me!). I don't know Joy Divsion's work but the acting in this film by the major players was excellent. Sam Riley as Curtis is very very good as is Samantha Morton as his downtrodden wife. I thought the guy who played the manager was a bit OTT. What a shame that Tony Wilson died before this was released. My reaction to it was much like the one I had to Trainspotting. I was convinced that I wouldn't like it but came away feeling that this was a very important film. Even if you don't know Punk music or Joy Division - go along. Well worth it.

Control fmovies. Anton Corbin has created a film that perfectly showcases both the music of Joy Division and the short but fruitful life of Ian Curtis. The choice to film in black and white was the right one. It sets the tone perfectly for Ian Curtis' gray and lifeless hometown of Macclesfield in 1973.

Corbin as a first time director excels utilizing his visual and technical skills from his previous life as a music video director. Thankfully Control is not just a beautiful looking movie but a perfectly pitched study of the rise and tragic fall of the tortured Ian Curtis. The intensity of the live music performances in the film are as visceral as those of the real band. It is a credit to the actors that they played everything live on screen, it serves to create memorable performances.

Sam Riley delivers a towering performance as Curtis. The first time actor is a name to watch. He is surrounded by a great cast but the film is carried on Riley's shoulders.His inner turmoil is conveyed with great humanity and realism. The audience was still and quiet for quite some time after the credits rolled at the screening I attended.

There are some very clever and touching uses of the music in the film. Corbin uses the intensity of Curtis' lyrics to help paint a biographical picture of the man. The use of 'Love will tear us apart' in the movie was particularly inspired giving the context of the scene it was played in. I hope you will go see this powerful and moving film to see what I am talking about.

Making the leap from photographer to music video director to film director, Anton Corbijn's feature length debut 'Control' is quite simply stunning. Shot entirely in black and white it tell the story of Ian Curtis the lead singer with Manchester band Joy Division but its also much more than that it also tells of one mans journey into the heart of darkness (Apocalypse Now is mentioned in the film) a journey of fear, paranoia, illness and depression. Curtis has been played in films before but only as bit parts (24 hour party people etc) here he is portrayed breathtakingly by Sam Riley who played Mark E Smith in 24 hour party people and when he first appears on the screen I have to admit I wasn't convinced but as Ian the person grows so too does Riley into the role and at times he has him so down to a tee its hard to imagine its not the real Curtis up there. The rest of the band are pretty good as well but are only really second fiddle to Riley but you have to give them credit for learning all the songs and playing them live rather than mime. Samantha Morton is great as the put upon wife Deborah and Craig Parkinson is convincing enough as Tony Wilson but apart from Riley's stand out performance its Toby Kebbell as manager Rob Gretton who has some of the best lines and has come so far since his role in 'Dead Man's Shoes'. The cinematography is a visual feast for the eyes, being shot in black and white adds to the mood and gives a haunting feel that echo's the music and lyrics of the band, it also means (and I guess its Corbijn's photography background) that so many of the shots in the movie could be still images they are framed so well. Although never really explained in terms of answers, Curtis's illness from the seizures to the depression and the hopeless sense of falling apart reminded me of Catherine Deneuve in Polanski's 'Repulsion' another black and white film that deals with madness. I guess that treating mental illnesses was still in its infancy in the seventies, yes we'd stopped electro-shocking people but medications were still being developed and trialled. It seems it was very easy for Curtis to reach a certain point what with juggling home, life on the road, his condition and the pressure of increasing fame but when it came to helping him out he really was on his own and did feel a sense of 'isolation'. But with a story that has a widely known end point its more about the journey and here Corbjin punctures the narrative with some truly witty moments while leading up the incredibly moving and inevitable finale. Handled brilliantly by all involved this is another example of a great British film that deserves all the accolades it is receiving and if this performance is anything to go by expect Riley to be very big indeed.

The first thing that strikes you about 'Control' is its silence, and the chilly beauty of its black and white images. As a still photographer first-time director Anton Corbijn photographed Joy Division in black and white during their short existence. He knows how to get the remorselessly grim feel of the north of England in the late Seventies. (The boys came from the outskirts of Manchester. Joy Division formed in 1976.) This film (there's a documentary just coming out on the band too) is loosely based on a memoir of her marriage by Deborah Curtis, lead singer Ian Curtis' young wife, who had a baby girl by him and then tragically found him after he'd hanged himself in 1980, two months short of his twenty-fourth birthday, just as the band was to tour America for the first time.

'Control's' strength is a certain recessiveness. In the English style, it's offhand and avoids huge dramatic crescendos. That's refreshing. And besides the images and the restraint, the film is worth seeing for the concert sequences. The cast actually plays the Joy Division music live, and Sam Riley, who plays Ian Curtis, not only closely resembles him, but is a riveting and intense, almost at times scary, performer. When he says the public doesn't know how much of himself he puts into his performances, we know what he means.

The film is excellent at showing Ian's dilemmas. The band is a sudden success. He has an attack in their car as the band returns from a gig. Doctors tell him he has a form of epilepsy. He's given a fistful of pills to take every day and told to have early nights and stay off the booze. How faithfully he takes the pills is unclear but he suffers from their side effects in various ways, while late nights and booze are essentials of his existence. It doesn't seem that the English doctors knew very well how to treat him, and he was so busy performing he didn't take the time to go to specialists and have more extensive tests.

Ian had gotten married to Deborah (Samantha Morton) early--too early. On the road he meets a Belgian part-time journalist, Annik Honoré (Alexandra Maria Lara), and they fall uneasily in love. He's not strong enough to decide between the two women. Fear that his disease will only get worse hounds him, and the fits go on. Riley is fascinating to watch as he undergoes an increasingly visible meltdown. Other cast members are cyphers, though Joe Anderson, who has the role of Max in Taymor's Across the Universe, is the lead guitarist. Morton has a drab role but Deborah's unfortunate situation is present as a constant counterpart to Ian's story. The two other important characters are the Manchester music guru Tony Wilson (Craig Parkinson) and the band's wise-guy manager Rob Gretton (Toby Kebbell).

The creative inspiration of the band, the nature of their songs, the cast of their lyrics, the reason why Joy Division is a cult band today when it only existed for four years--these are matters the film is unable to elucidate. Watch it for the cool visuals, for the tall, soulful Sam Riley, and for the terrific live performance scenes. Enjoy the understatement, and the silence. Don't expect more.

Harvey Weinstein has chosen both for Control and for the soon-to-open Todd Haynes Bob Dylan film I'm Not There to have a slowly-unrolling distribution system, and hopes to bestow early cult status on both films by having them premiere at that temple of cinephilia, Film Forum, in lower Manhattan, New York City, and