Toronto - Having seen the Joy Division Documentary at TIFF earlier this year, it was only natural for me to finish off the JD tag team by watching Control, a biographical movie based on the memoirs of Deborah Curtis and directed by Anton Corbijn.

Its hard to review a movie when you (and everyone else in the theatre) know the general plot. There are no plot twists or anything, as you know where this movie is heading towards. I guess we can start with the acting. Holy crap, Sam Riley was quite good as Ian Curtis, he got the guys performing style down pat. I mean, down pat. The movie was had a bunch of no names, aside from Samantha Morton, who was nominated for a few oscars for movies i’ve never seen before. I would say most of the actors did a good job, although I prefer Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson. They make Bernard Sumners out to be such a geek, but thats probably true.

The movie was in black and white. Apparantly, it was shot in color and then turned to black and white (probably with the magic of Adobe Photoshop’s grayscale filter). Either way, it looks gorgeous. I don’t know why, but I think this movie wouldn’t of come off as good if it was in color. England was probably pretty bland back then (still is), so if this movie was colored itd be all grey and faded colors and stuff. Not pretty.

The plot moves along rather slowly, it starts in 1973, when Ian meets Debbie for the first time, and goes from there. The movie doesn’t really spell things out for people, so I would think non Joy Division fans may get lost. They probably wouldn’t know the significance of someone like Tony Wilson or Factory Records or even how bleak the atmosphere was at the time.

The latter part of the movie is all about Ian’s decline, as he deals with his epilepsy, problems with his wife, his girlfriend, the pressures of stardom, etc, etc. Ultimately, it leads to his death. The last few moments are slow, and I would have to say, the anticipation was high. There are some nice scenes of Ian just smoking a ciggy and in your mind you are just like man, whats he thinking. Taking a step back, its kinda hard to think that this dude (who is highly revered in the music community) was just 23 when he offed himself, and the movie paints him out to be not the most saintliest of characters. Keep in mind I guess, that the movie is based on the memoirs of his wife, who probably wasn’t too pleased about his ex husbands extra marital activities.

All in all, this was a very good movie. I think the girl sitting one row behind us was crying at the end of the movie. So its definitely not an upper of a movie.

4/5

err thanks to jeff for the bernard sumners name correction