Control - a film about Ian Curtis

I love Joy Division and like Ian Curtis. I thought he was a great presence and an original figure. He may have set a template for a style of 6th form poetry that is a less than endearing legacy, but we can't really blame him for that; he was simply being himself, in all his harsh glory. I do find the legend that has grown around the guy since he took his own life in 1980 a little hard to take. He wasn't that great. He wasn't a poet. He wasn't a spokesperson for a generation. He was one part of four, or five if you include the innovative production skills of Martin Hannett, that created a dark and sometimes beautiful soundscape that reflected the grim northern environment that they sprung from. Joy Divsion's legacy belongs as much to Hannett, Hook, Morris and Sumner as it does Curtis. Without them, it would never have happened.

So when I heard that there was to be a biopic about Ian Curtis called Control, I did fear the worst - a hagiography, a re-writing of history, a romanticised depiction of the facts. Luckily Control is none of the above.

Directed by Anton Corbijn, whose first job when he moved to England in 1979 was to photograph Joy Division, the film doesn't mess around with the facts, helped immensely by it's main source, the Joy Divsion biography Touching From A Distance, written by Curtis's widow Debbie.

The Ian Curtis we see here is not an icon, but a troubled intelligent soul who was far from perfect, particularly in the manner in which he treated his wife. His affair with Belgian Annik Honore is well documented thoughout. His fixation with epilepsy is touched on also, as we see the inspiration behind 'She's Lost Control' and how the condition begins to eventually take it's toll on Curtis himself.


The film is shot in black and white, in keeping with the general presentation of Curtis and Joy Division on camera throughout the years. It also serves to capture the urban coldness of late seventies Manchester to great effect. Sam Riley is excellent as Curtis, bearing both a physical and vocal similarity. Samantha Morton is as solid as ever as his wife Debbie.


The Manchester music scene of Control is a lot harsher and more realistic than the comedic caricature presented in Michael Winterbottom's 2001 film 24 Hour Party People. The soundtrack, naturally, is top quality, taking in Joy Division's classics mixed with Bowie and Kraftwerk. 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', 'Isolation' and 'Atmosphere' are used at exactly the right time, offering weighty parallels between the lyrics and the scenes. The climax is fitting, appropriate and done with a sensitivity and realism that refuses to lend itself to any kind of elevation of Curtis. This is about Ian Curtis the person, not the legend, and is why the film works as well as it does.