He Lost Control

With 2 boys aged 3 months and 3 years running us ragged, there's precious little down time around the Scanlin household. But last Saturday night, after the jammies/teeth-brush/bed time stories routine was completed, I managed to stay awake long enough to check out the Ian Curtis biopic "Control". Being a massively huge Joy Division and New Order fan, I've wanted to see the movie ever since it came out.

The verdict: it was just OK.

Much has been made about director Anton Corbijn's decision to film the movie in black and white. I'm a fan of Corbijn's iconic shots of bands like U2 and REM (and Joy Division) as much as the next guy, but the reason those shots are so powerful is that they're moments captured in time. They're iconic. But there's nothing iconic or powerful about a guy waiting for the bus, or brushing his teeth. In other words, it's difficult/impossible to sustain Corbijn's dramatic aesthetic over the course of a 2 hour, live action feature film. It really just ends up looking like any other black and white movie.

The film's star, Sam Riley, bears an incredible resemblance to Ian Curtis, and his acting was proficient if not revelatory. His singing on the other hand was awesome. The guy does an almost spot-on Curtis. But that's not enough to save the film.

I think director Michael Winterbottom did a much better job of contextualizing and portraying Curtis and Joy Division in his kick-ass film 24 Hour Party People. That movie contained versions of all the pivotal scenes portrayed in Control (Ian's first seizure, Ian's confrontation with Tony Wilson at the club, Ian's last moments), but dealt with them in a much more compelling way. And while Winterbottom was at it, he managed to chronicle two decades of Manchester music - no small feat. (I think the coolest scene in Party People is when we see the newly christened New Order, still mourning Curtis's death, fumbling their way through an embryonic version of "Blue Monday" in their dank practice space. The song would go on to become the biggest selling single in UK chart history.)

So now, some random thoughts about Joy Division and "Control":

- It's awesome that Corbijn references Curtis's love of The Doors early in the film. By his own admission, Curtis owes a tremendous debt to Jim Morrison, and the snarky music fanatic (and unabashed Doors fan) in me thinks it's awesome that Corbijn acknowledges this in his film.

- Joy Division were so fucking cool it's kinda ridiculous. Their dark hooks continue to be pretty much irresistible to generations of angst-ridden kids, while their unrelentingly linear sound has been massively influential (we must also credit production genius Martin Hannett here). And their look! In the annals of rock history, you will find only a handful of bands that so effortlessly looked as cool as Joy Division. It's like their clothes were the perfect compliment to their sound. Yes, you can say that about a lot of bands in this day and age, but it's always contrived. Joy Division's fashion sense looked as if it literally seeped out of their amp cabinets and onto their bodies.

- If my boys ever endeavor to be in rock bands (and I pray that they do), I will sit them down and play for them choice cuts by JD. At the end of this little listening session, I will enumerate the lessons learned: 1) You need to have a sound that is your own. 2) Less is more. Listen to the sparseness of this music. Listen to what is not there. Listen to how powerful simple bass, drums, guitar and vocals can be. 3) You need to look cool. 4) Be mysterious - the world does not need to know everything about you, or what you had for breakfast. To which they will of course reply: "Whatever, dad. We wanna hear that Poison record - the one with 'Talk Dirty To Me.'"

- Ian Curtis was kind of a narcissistic dick. If you were going to kill yourself, why would you hang yourself in your living room, knowing that your loved ones would find you and be scarred for life by the image of it? David Foster Wallace just did this exact thing. WTF, people? If you must shuffle yourself off this mortal coil, please have the decency and foresight to do it some place where a complete stranger will find you, instead of the people who really care about you. I mean, c'mon. It's just rude.

I'm off to listen to Unknown Pleasures for the 14th time this week. Toodles! ~ Tim