Good production. Slacker subject. | Control (The Miriam Collection)

Indispensable but Limited | Control (The Miriam Collection) | Samantha Morton, Sam Riley (II)

DVDs:


	• Control (The Miriam Collection) Samantha Morton, Sam Riley (II) The Weinstein Company, 2008 average customer review:based on 39 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

As disembodied as the music, yet beautiful to watch

Biopics are usually very dull and drag their feet getting to the core of the story that matters rather than what the director uses to assume credibility or closeness to the source. This is not one of those movies because you never connect with Ian to feel like you have any connection at all, nor do you get a sense of chronology by music, lyrics, or anything else that made us drawn to the movie.

You watch a very beautiful picture show. At times unflattering to the 90 seconds we get of Sumner's dialogue, and in general, the actors seem a little peeved they are even in the movie, but honest to a fault since given the writer's apathetic take and connection to the subject, "that is what it was like" we are left to assume. There are many things missed and the band aspect could be substituted for just about any job, as the music and gigs are atmosphere and not plot with the emphasis on Ian only showing up to sing, and not pouring out emotions in to writing his lyrics. I am left wondering what was left out or what the writer was thinking some 20 years on leaving the cast and story to be told out of memories that were not so clear or maybe the director, an extremely talented photographer, was making a movie out of a romanticised notion going over at 24 frames per second shots he wished he could have taken at the time.

Simlarities to the Doors can be made, but here, Ian's life is not made glamorous. We do sort of miss the point though, you feel as shut out by him as his wife must have felt, and yet even some more token performances and chronology could have helped us fans put the songs in to perspective since if this was a movie about some steelworker, we would not have watched it. We watched this because it was about Ian, the lead singer of Joy Division, but yet I appreciate that it was not a music video with liner notes stitching his life together.

for more information click here

Good production. Slacker subject.

The movie technically is very good. My dismay with the subject material, however, grew throughout the film to dim my impression of the whole movie. I was looking for redeeming qualities in Ian Curtis but did not find many to speak of. He was a good musician, but a lousy, amoral husband and father. I have heard the music of Joy Division, but I am less impressed today.

Indispensable but Limited

Of the three Joy Division films available, "24 Hour Party People," Grant Gee's excellent documentary "Joy Division," and "Control," "Control" is the least fun and the most demanding. It suffers from concentrating on Ian Curtis and his final days - it moves quickly through the formation of Joy Division to the chaotic and disastrous last week of his life, exploring his final hours in some detail. So it's depressing - interesting and beautiful to watch, but it ends badly, of course. The film does justice to the onset of his epilepsy, betrayal of his young wife and baby, a love affair he can't resist, the band's new fame, ending in his suicide, all sensitively treated with taste and restraint. Anton Corbijn's photography is gorgeous and the acting is strong, but the script is minimalist to a fault. A standout is the part of Annik Honore, played by the lissome and limpid-eyed Alexandra Maria Lara. Corbijn overdoes the shots of her smiling up prettily at Curtis from the audience in concert scene after scene, but this movie makes it as clear as the docu how different she was from Curtis's everyday Macclesfield milieu. Alexandra Maria Lara also played Hitler's high-spirited secretary Traudl in the outstanding "Downfall."

for more information click here

subtle, well-acted docudrama

"Control" is a biopic about Ian Curtis, the lead singer of the 1970's British rock band Joy Division, who killed himself in 1980 immediately before the group was to embark on its first American tour. The movie chronicles Curtis' early days in Manchester, the formation and rise of the band, his unhappy marriage, his serial philandering, his uncontrollable epilepsy, and his lifelong battle with depression.

One might be tempted, looking at the bareboned detailing of his life, to ask if there is really anything new here. And indeed, Curtis' story seems to follow a fairly standard arc for the lives of artists in general and rock musicians in particular (though there doesn`t seem to be a whole lot of illicit drug use going on in this case), and as such the movie doesn't show us much of anything we haven't already seen countless times before in similar works. Yet, "Control" is so cool, understated and restrained in its handling of the material that it succeeds in drawing us into the lives of these characters in spite of the over-familiarity of the tale. The conflicts are real and the emotions raw, particularly when dealing with Curtis' rocky relationship with his wife, Deborah, who loved Ian unconditionally but could never get him to reciprocate those feelings, partly because Ian had fallen in love with a Belgian fan he met while on tour.

In a beautifully controlled and thoughtful performance, Sam Riley poignantly captures the sadness that seems to lie ever present at the core of Curtis' being, while Samantha Morton conveys the almost desperate state of a woman too much in love to realize, until it is too late perhaps, that she isn`t receiving love in return (the Matt Greenhalgh screenplay is based largely on Deborah`s memoirs chronicling their time together). Much of the anguish Curtis went through in his life served as source material for the lyrics to many of the group`s songs, a number of which are used to provide a running commentary throughout the film. The movie also makes effective use of voiceover narration to try to figure out what is going on in that troubled head of his.

For his impressive directorial debut, photographer Anton Corbijn has wisely chosen to shoot his film in artful black-and-white, the better to capture the starkness of the scene and the state of his character's mind. Joy Division purists may object to the fact that Corbijn has had the actors themselves perform the songs rather than dubbing in the originals, but they do a fine job overall in interpreting the pieces.

Whether Curtis, in the long run, had a harder life than many who don't wind up committing suicide is not for us to determine. What the film does make clear, however, is that once he felt he was losing control over his life (symbolized by his constant and seemingly incurable epileptic seizures) and had pretty much made a mess of things as a husband, a father and a lover, his purpose for continuing in the struggle seemed to have disappeared. What a sad conclusion to come to, especially when one is only twenty-three years old. With subtlety and insight, "Control" movingly distills the essence of that sadness.

for more information click here

I expected more

This film is made in black and white which immediately fosters idea that it should be treated as an art movie. It starts that was but half way thru it, it simply drags on. I did not know much about "Joy Division" and Ian Curtis, until I started reading film and book reviews about him. Surely, it is always intriguing for anyone to try to figure out what drives a person of 23 years to commit suicide, the way Ian did. Born and raised in Manchester, with no education and not much to do, he marries young, has a baby on the impulse and starts career as a singer in a local band as a way to keep himself involved with the crowd and nurtures his musical talent. He also likes to write poems so it seems natural, his attraction to the art. Until one day, Ian discovers that he is epileptic. His life is consisting of pills he needs to have around the clock in order to avoid the seizures that have devastating effect on his body and overall mental state. Tours to promote his band's material, binge drinking, late hours inside crowded clubs, hords of fans and women are adding unexpected stress to his life. Ian is unable and unwilling to tend to his wife and young child and is having mistress who is French, seemingly sophisticated and free as a person -- which is amazing to him. He starts his affair with Annik Honore almost as a way to create a new freedom for himself only to learn too soon that it is impossible to have it all. He is immature, more than he is a jerk and emotionally unstable to handle all the changes that happened to him too quickly in both his personal and professional life. Ian is troubled and there is really no one that can help him with his problems. Him committing suicide almost seems like the only available option to the complete chaos in his life. He is just too much of a burden to his own self and people around him and with his epilepsy his future is bleak anyway...I think I would like to listen to his album - his voice seems to be unique. I still need to hear his message from his lyrics.

for more information click here

Control tells the remarkable story of Ian Curtis, lead singer of the influential band Joy Division and one of the most enigmatic figures in all of rock music. Based on his wife's memoir, Control follows Curtis' humble Manchester origins and his rapid rise to fame, tormented battle with epilepsy, and struggles with love that led to his death at the age of 23.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

hot