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DEAD SOUL - Eye Weekly Reviews of Control and Joy Division Documentary
By accepting the role of one of rock's most mythologized figures, Sam Riley had to live up to many people's expectations. Worse yet, some of those people were standing right in front of him. For the filming of the concert sequences in Control – Anton Corbijn's sensitive, stately drama about the short, tumultuous life of Ian Curtis, the Joy Division singer whose menacing music and gloomy mystique had an enormous influence on both the Manchester scene and the last three decades' worth of alt-rock – the sweaty extras in the audience were many of the band's biggest fans.
Director Anton Corbijn and actor Sam Riley transmit the spirit of Ian Curtis and Joy Division
By Jason Anderson
CONTROL ****
Starring Sam Riley, Samantha Morton. Written by Matt Greenhalgh. Directed by Anton Corbijn. 121 min. Sep 7, 9:45pm, Scotiabank 2; Sep 8, 9am, Scotiabank 2.
By accepting the role of one of rock's most mythologized figures, Sam Riley had to live up to many people's expectations. Worse yet, some of those people were standing right in front of him. For the filming of the concert sequences in Control – Anton Corbijn's sensitive, stately drama about the short, tumultuous life of Ian Curtis, the Joy Division singer whose menacing music and gloomy mystique had an enormous influence on both the Manchester scene and the last three decades' worth of alt-rock – the sweaty extras in the audience were many of the band's biggest fans.
“That's how we got them cheap,” quips Riley in an interview last week from his apartment in Berlin.
Unfortunately, they were also there to make sure Riley, an actor and musician plucked out of obscurity to play Curtis, did his job right. “I had a guy come up to me and say, ‘So, you Ian, then?' I said, ‘Yeah.' And he said, ‘Well, I saw them eight times, mate, so it'd better be fookin' good.' I was like, ‘I hope so too!' There were some pretty crazy people who don't want Ian or Ian's myth to be fucked about with. I asked a fellow in the front row if he was a Joy Division fan. He said ‘Yeah,' then lifted up his shirt – he had a huge tattoo of Ian's face on his left tit. I thought, ‘Aw, fuck.'”
Whether or not we opt for body art, everyone who's loved Joy Division's music has their own version of Curtis, the genuine article who hanged himself in 1980 at the age of 23. He also haunts the memories of the friends and family he left behind, such as his widow Deborah Curtis, whose 1996 memoir Touching From a Distance served as the basis for Control, and his bandmates, who went on to greater success as New Order. Yet Riley's deeply committed performance has attracted nothing but accolades since Control premiered at Cannes in May. (The movie makes its North American premiere this week at TIFF.)
Likewise, Control is an impressive, fully realized feature debut for Corbijn, long one of the music world's most celebrated photographers and video directors. (His list of credits includes shooting the cover of U2's The Joshua Tree and directing Nirvana's “Heart-Shaped Box” video.) Skirting the clichés of the rock biopic, Corbijn delves deep into Curtis' life to portray him not as some existential loner but a charismatic, energetic yet troubled young man who derives little satisfaction from his growing success due to his worsening epileptic fits and his inability to choose between the two women he loves, wife Deborah (Samantha Morton) and girlfriend Annik (Alexandra Maria Lara).
“The film is quite a human portrait of Ian Curtis,” says Corbijn in a phone interview from his home in London. “We are not building a myth around him.”
Though the live sequences – with Joy Division's songs performed convincingly by Riley and the actors playing his bandmates – are plenty riveting, Control is more remarkable for its moments of quiet intimacy than any displays of onstage bravura. “In many ways that's what I've always been interested in,” says Corbijn. “If you look at my photography in my books, you don't see really live shots. You don't see this kind of orgasm onstage. You see more the pain of artists as they're trying to create things.”
Seeing that Corbijn actually shot some of the most iconic Joy Division photographs – their look and the band's artwork are emulated by Control's austere black-and-white cinematography – he would seem to be the perfect choice to make Control. Yet he initially rejected the offer to direct it, worrying that he would not be taken seriously as a movie director if he took on a “rock film.” Thankfully, the more he thought about this era and this music, the more he realized “how incredibly important it had been in my life – that music made me change countries. I had moved from Holland to work with Joy Division.”
Since the production involved Deborah Curtis, New Order and Factory Records founder Tony Wilson (a legend in his own right who died from complications due to renal cancer last month), Corbijn would also have to do justice to Curtis' memory in the eyes of those who loved him. Yet, as the director says, “I had no agenda other than telling Ian's story. I wasn't choosing between people – I was trying to be objective.”
A greater challenge was finding an actor who could play Curtis. (Thankfully it wasn't Jude Law, who was once attached to the project.) Riley's careers in acting and music had stalled – he played Mark E. Smith of The Fall in a scene cut from 24 Hour Party People and his band 10,000 Things sputtered out after one album – and he had a job folding shirts in a Leeds warehouse when his agent called about auditioning for Control. Corbijn was struck by Riley's appearance during their first meeting.
“I remember meeting Joy Division in late 1979 and they were like real English boys,” Corbijn says. “They hadn't eaten enough and they had just shirts on with big coats when it was really too cold for that, and they were smoking and shivering. When I met Sam, he was identical to them – he was also underdressed, underfed, smoking and shivering! It was really uncanny.”
Calling the role a “golden part,” Riley set out to learn all he could about Curtis, talking to those who knew him. “Just about everybody I've spoken to said he was really a charming, pleasant and affable young man but was drawn away from everyone by the illness, the medication and the pressures,” he says. “He was a mess of contradictions. He had dreams of being a rock star and then he wanted to turn his back on it and be a good family man. Yet he resented his family at the same time, and resented his love affair while loving the woman as well. He was completely torn apart.”
As is clear from his performance, Riley says he gave the role “everything I had. This was my big chance, my big opportunity to do something decent with my life, so I locked myself away from family and friends for that whole period and tried to stay as close to it as possible and worry about the consequences later. There were times it was very hard but I was always thrilled to be there. A few lines were blurred here and there obviously, but it worked in the end and I've recovered from it.”
The fruit of his labours is a powerful homage to Ian Curtis that will please Joy Division fanatics just as much as it moves viewers hearing his music for the first time. That said, Riley isn't exactly eager to bear that kind of weight again.
“I don't want to make a specialty of playing suicidal young men,” he says. “Maybe a slapstick comedy's next.”
JOY DIVISION: THE LAST TRUE STORY IN POP ****
Dir Grant Gee. 93 min. Real to Reel program. Sep 7, 2:45pm, Scotiabank 3; Sep 9, 5:30pm, Cumberland 3; Sep 15, 8:15pm, Cumberland 3.
An unofficial companion piece to Anton Corbijn's Ian Curtis feature, Gee's doc is sure to be the last word in Joy Division mythology. Of course, like Corbijn's film, it hardly deals in mythology at all: what's presented here is a tidy and stark history of the band's brief career from the perspective of the players, associates and onlookers, with the city of Manchester treated as a figure among those. With no filmed interview footage of Curtis – but some excellent and oft-seen TV performances – Gee trawls through notebooks and audio tapes to the extent where Curtis' ghost inhabits the film as much as it does his records (a tape of the singer speaking under hypnosis, and seemingly from a past life, to guitarist Bernard Sumner is downright chilling). There is humour as well as heartbreak, and Gee's procession of curio is presented stylishly but never intrusively. Joy Division peeks behind some very heavy curtains to reveal a vivid and lively history.
KIERAN GRANT
By Jason Anderson
CONTROL ****
Starring Sam Riley, Samantha Morton. Written by Matt Greenhalgh. Directed by Anton Corbijn. 121 min. Sep 7, 9:45pm, Scotiabank 2; Sep 8, 9am, Scotiabank 2.
By accepting the role of one of rock's most mythologized figures, Sam Riley had to live up to many people's expectations. Worse yet, some of those people were standing right in front of him. For the filming of the concert sequences in Control – Anton Corbijn's sensitive, stately drama about the short, tumultuous life of Ian Curtis, the Joy Division singer whose menacing music and gloomy mystique had an enormous influence on both the Manchester scene and the last three decades' worth of alt-rock – the sweaty extras in the audience were many of the band's biggest fans.
“That's how we got them cheap,” quips Riley in an interview last week from his apartment in Berlin.
Unfortunately, they were also there to make sure Riley, an actor and musician plucked out of obscurity to play Curtis, did his job right. “I had a guy come up to me and say, ‘So, you Ian, then?' I said, ‘Yeah.' And he said, ‘Well, I saw them eight times, mate, so it'd better be fookin' good.' I was like, ‘I hope so too!' There were some pretty crazy people who don't want Ian or Ian's myth to be fucked about with. I asked a fellow in the front row if he was a Joy Division fan. He said ‘Yeah,' then lifted up his shirt – he had a huge tattoo of Ian's face on his left tit. I thought, ‘Aw, fuck.'”
Whether or not we opt for body art, everyone who's loved Joy Division's music has their own version of Curtis, the genuine article who hanged himself in 1980 at the age of 23. He also haunts the memories of the friends and family he left behind, such as his widow Deborah Curtis, whose 1996 memoir Touching From a Distance served as the basis for Control, and his bandmates, who went on to greater success as New Order. Yet Riley's deeply committed performance has attracted nothing but accolades since Control premiered at Cannes in May. (The movie makes its North American premiere this week at TIFF.)
Likewise, Control is an impressive, fully realized feature debut for Corbijn, long one of the music world's most celebrated photographers and video directors. (His list of credits includes shooting the cover of U2's The Joshua Tree and directing Nirvana's “Heart-Shaped Box” video.) Skirting the clichés of the rock biopic, Corbijn delves deep into Curtis' life to portray him not as some existential loner but a charismatic, energetic yet troubled young man who derives little satisfaction from his growing success due to his worsening epileptic fits and his inability to choose between the two women he loves, wife Deborah (Samantha Morton) and girlfriend Annik (Alexandra Maria Lara).
“The film is quite a human portrait of Ian Curtis,” says Corbijn in a phone interview from his home in London. “We are not building a myth around him.”
Though the live sequences – with Joy Division's songs performed convincingly by Riley and the actors playing his bandmates – are plenty riveting, Control is more remarkable for its moments of quiet intimacy than any displays of onstage bravura. “In many ways that's what I've always been interested in,” says Corbijn. “If you look at my photography in my books, you don't see really live shots. You don't see this kind of orgasm onstage. You see more the pain of artists as they're trying to create things.”
Seeing that Corbijn actually shot some of the most iconic Joy Division photographs – their look and the band's artwork are emulated by Control's austere black-and-white cinematography – he would seem to be the perfect choice to make Control. Yet he initially rejected the offer to direct it, worrying that he would not be taken seriously as a movie director if he took on a “rock film.” Thankfully, the more he thought about this era and this music, the more he realized “how incredibly important it had been in my life – that music made me change countries. I had moved from Holland to work with Joy Division.”
Since the production involved Deborah Curtis, New Order and Factory Records founder Tony Wilson (a legend in his own right who died from complications due to renal cancer last month), Corbijn would also have to do justice to Curtis' memory in the eyes of those who loved him. Yet, as the director says, “I had no agenda other than telling Ian's story. I wasn't choosing between people – I was trying to be objective.”
A greater challenge was finding an actor who could play Curtis. (Thankfully it wasn't Jude Law, who was once attached to the project.) Riley's careers in acting and music had stalled – he played Mark E. Smith of The Fall in a scene cut from 24 Hour Party People and his band 10,000 Things sputtered out after one album – and he had a job folding shirts in a Leeds warehouse when his agent called about auditioning for Control. Corbijn was struck by Riley's appearance during their first meeting.
“I remember meeting Joy Division in late 1979 and they were like real English boys,” Corbijn says. “They hadn't eaten enough and they had just shirts on with big coats when it was really too cold for that, and they were smoking and shivering. When I met Sam, he was identical to them – he was also underdressed, underfed, smoking and shivering! It was really uncanny.”
Calling the role a “golden part,” Riley set out to learn all he could about Curtis, talking to those who knew him. “Just about everybody I've spoken to said he was really a charming, pleasant and affable young man but was drawn away from everyone by the illness, the medication and the pressures,” he says. “He was a mess of contradictions. He had dreams of being a rock star and then he wanted to turn his back on it and be a good family man. Yet he resented his family at the same time, and resented his love affair while loving the woman as well. He was completely torn apart.”
As is clear from his performance, Riley says he gave the role “everything I had. This was my big chance, my big opportunity to do something decent with my life, so I locked myself away from family and friends for that whole period and tried to stay as close to it as possible and worry about the consequences later. There were times it was very hard but I was always thrilled to be there. A few lines were blurred here and there obviously, but it worked in the end and I've recovered from it.”
The fruit of his labours is a powerful homage to Ian Curtis that will please Joy Division fanatics just as much as it moves viewers hearing his music for the first time. That said, Riley isn't exactly eager to bear that kind of weight again.
“I don't want to make a specialty of playing suicidal young men,” he says. “Maybe a slapstick comedy's next.”
JOY DIVISION: THE LAST TRUE STORY IN POP ****
Dir Grant Gee. 93 min. Real to Reel program. Sep 7, 2:45pm, Scotiabank 3; Sep 9, 5:30pm, Cumberland 3; Sep 15, 8:15pm, Cumberland 3.
An unofficial companion piece to Anton Corbijn's Ian Curtis feature, Gee's doc is sure to be the last word in Joy Division mythology. Of course, like Corbijn's film, it hardly deals in mythology at all: what's presented here is a tidy and stark history of the band's brief career from the perspective of the players, associates and onlookers, with the city of Manchester treated as a figure among those. With no filmed interview footage of Curtis – but some excellent and oft-seen TV performances – Gee trawls through notebooks and audio tapes to the extent where Curtis' ghost inhabits the film as much as it does his records (a tape of the singer speaking under hypnosis, and seemingly from a past life, to guitarist Bernard Sumner is downright chilling). There is humour as well as heartbreak, and Gee's procession of curio is presented stylishly but never intrusively. Joy Division peeks behind some very heavy curtains to reveal a vivid and lively history.
KIERAN GRANT
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Thanks to: Vik
Location: Toronto, Canada
