Control is a beautifully-shot, brilliantly-acted, exquisitely-designed film that told me absolutely nothing whatsoever of interest about the life and death of Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division.
The main thing that everybody knows about Ian Curtis is that he killed himself, and the main thing you come out of the film knowing is that he was an inscrutable bastard who killed himself. I do not use the word bastard with any affection. He stands around for the entire film looking moody about his dreadful dreadful problems: he can't choose between his wife and his mistress, he has epilepsy, he is in Joy Division. He is pathetic. Knowing what is coming, you start getting restless hoping that he will just get a move on rather than staging yet another argument with his wife in his bleak Macclesfield home. I am not sure that this is how I am supposed to feel after watching a biopic about a genius musician and his tragic demise.
Sam Riley puts in a fine, glowering performance as Curtis, and does an amazing job in the live sequences that are the highlight of the film; the actors playing Joy Division perform the songs themselves and the energy is captivating and unfeigned. When not on stage, Joy Division are largely defined by their hair: Bernard (naff fringe), Hooky (trendy cut), drummer (nondescript) which suggests to me that Bernard was the naff one, Hooky the trendy one, and nobody gives a shit about the drummer. But I am only guessing, you don't really get to see more of them than this. The women in Curtis's life are similarly superficially drawn. Despite her best efforts, Samantha Morton has nothing to work with to help her character, Curtis's wife, move beyond ordinary and progressively frumpy, and the only differentiation you get between her and Curtis's mistress is that the latter is thinner, better dressed and wears artistic eyeliner. As the characterisation comes entirely out of the wardrobe and not out of the lines, this is not a film to go to if you are blind.
Everybody does their best but the script is ultimately too weak. What we get is a chronology without insight. It is not enough to tell me that these events are interesting because they are about Ian Curtis, or that Ian Curtis is interesting because he was a talent who died young. I knew all that before I turned up. From a biopic you need something more, and all you learn from this is that Joy Division were a band you would like to have seen live but you will never get the chance, and that it's grim Up North, especially in black and white.
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