Demob Happy

Touching from a distance

7/10

Control is a biopic about the legendary Manchester post-punk band Joy Division, and more specifically about their late lead singer Ian Curtis who hanged himself at the age of 23, having produced only one album and a handful of singles. Such is the legacy of the music made in this short time - indeed it is especially fashionable at the moment with countless pretenders clogging the indie charts - that this is not even the first film to focus on the band and Tony Wilson’s legendery Factory Records. Whereas Michael Winterbottom’s ‘24 Hour Party People’ was more parodic and tongue-in-cheek, Control is a bleaker, less celebratory film, shot in stark monchrome redolent of the utter blackness of Joy Division’s music. Based on a book ‘Touching From a Distance’, by Curtis’ wife Deborah - who also co-produced this film - Control pits the relatively unknown Sam Riley as Curtis against Samantha Morton’s Deborah. Much of the pre-film publicity suggested that Riley was picked from total obscurity to play the part, although his appearance (just to confuse matters) as The Fall’s Mark E Smith in ‘24 Hour Party People’ suggests this was not his first attempt at acting. It must have been a calculated in-joke then, that at one point in the film Riley’s Ian Curtis is told, ‘it could be worse, you could be the lead singer in The Fall’.

The fact that this is based on a book by Curtis’ wife is a telling one, as is that book’s title ‘Touching From a Distance’. This film suggests that Curtis was emotionally impenetratable and that while he married Deborah too young, and was unable to reciprocate her love (or fidelity) for him, he was ultimately unable to leave her. It also suggests that his inability to choose between his wife and his Belgian ‘mistress’ was one of the factors that lead him to take his own life. What isn’t so clear - since the story evidently originates from Deborah even if the film is not told from her perspective - is the depth of Curtis’ feelings for the other woman (Annick). Annick is initially presented as a wide-eyed European groupie, and her character is not fleshed out enough for us to emphasise with the subsequent agonising torment that Curtis suffers as he is forced to choose between her and divorce from his wife. Furthermore, Curtis is never shown as anything but remote and perfunctary with his wife - whose marriage with he recognises as ‘a mistake’ - and it isn’t totally clear why he was unable to leave her. Was he tortured with guilt or was he just too young to take responsibilites for his actions? As with many biopics, we are constricted by the facts. At one stage Annick says to Curtis “I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t feel I know you, and sometimes I feel you don’t know me”. As a viewer we can empathise. But is that the point? Was Curtis ultimately unknowable, as emotionally impenetratable and isolated as Joy Division’s music? The film also focuses on his epilepsy and finally his inability to cope with the growing demands of fame and success - but ultimately can anyone know the true nature or torment of such a person?

The film is also occasionally reduced to voiceover to flesh out Curtis’ thinking where the film lacks the skill to convey this through other, subtler means. Sometimes these voiceovers are clearly derived from letters but in other cases it is unclear. If they are not from letters, whose words are they? This is lazy filmmaking and a shame given the intensity brought to performances by Riley and Morton. The fact that Dutch director Anton Corbijn is a traditionally a photographer by trade is also telling. The bleak Northern English towns are lovingly photographed and framed, and he uses long tracking shots not so much to establish a scene or even a mood but rather to immerse the viewer in some kind of visual iconography associated with the band and their music. As with the ’scene’ featuring Curtis walking through his neighbourhood with the word ‘Hate’ on the back of his jacket while Joy Division’s music pounds in the background, it is striking to look at but ultimately a visual conceit as empty as a pop video. Despite all the criticisms, I found myself in tears at the end of the film, which is the highest compliment I can give. For if Curtis’ pain is unknowable, Deborah’s pain - in the devestating final sequence - is heartbreakingly real. It is for this that I give this film four stars, and let my heart rule over my head on this occasion.

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