Pulse

One of the best-known song by the short-lived but exponentially admired and influential late-1970's British rock band Joy Division is entitled "She's Lost Control", and when watching it being sung by actor Sam Riley reincarnating doomed lead singer Ian Curtis in Anton Corbijn's brilliant new picture, Control, it finally fell into place for me. Curtis wasn't singing about "she", he was singing about himself:

And she turned around and took me by the hand
And said I've lost control again.
And how I'll never know just why or understand
She said I've lost control again.
And she screamed out kicking on her side
And said I've lost control again.
And seized up on the floor, I thought she'd die.
She said I've lost control.
She's lost control again.
She's lost control.
She's lost control again.
She's lost control.

Control is about an immensely promising young artist who loses control of his body thanks to epileptic seizures that plague him even onstage, who loses control of his mind to the crapshoot combo of drug prescriptions meant to control the seizures, and who loses control of his heart when torn between his wife and is band-following mistress. He took final control on May 18, 1980, by ending his life, thus entering into the pantheon of rock & roll legend.

I arrived in London three months later for my Junior Year of college, having heard a little bit about Joy Division back in the states, where the most musically adventurous of university acquaintances had their first album, Unknown Pleasures. Just before I arrived in England, as I remember, their second and final album was released, posthumously for Curtis, Closer. It's a dark, at times industrial, often propulsive record, an instant classic, simultaneously spare and dense, the pulsating beat of the odd lead bass, ultra-separated drums, and rhythm factory guitar laying an edgy, icy, addictive bed for Curtis' signature bass baritone, as ritualistic as a church service, albeit one held on a dance floor at three in the morning.

It's that pulsation, that pulse, which infuses Control with a spirit somehow less depressing than you might imagine, considering Curtis' final act, the bad-times Manchester setting, and the black & white cinematography. In fact, that time in England was a era of Joy Division wannabe bands, dronish act of diminishing interest all inspired by the band's sound and Curtis' newly minted legend. If the band was white and new, it droned. What the majority of those bands failed to capture, however, and what Corbijn and Riley capture so tellingly, is that Joy Division didn't just have drone; it had swing.

Yes, buried in the seriousness of their musical moments, at his best, Curtis glided back and forth over the beats like a jazz singer, albeit one raised in ancient Sparta. One of the most astonishing after-viewing facts I discovered was that Riley and his fellow actors actually decided to play the music themselves rather than sync to the original tracks, and it infuses the stage scenes with real energy and credibility, much like Gary Busey and company in The Buddy Holly Story (itself released in 1978). Riley, a U.K. band veteran, channels Curtis' trademark vocals so well that I naturally assumed it was lipsync. Hence the mandate for him to win a bunch of end-of-year acting awards.

Corbijn had just come from his native Holland to England back then when he was assigned a photo shoot with Joy Division. He explains that he barely spent any time with the band, but clearly this first feature has been a mission for him, adapting wife Deborah Curtis' book Touching from a Distance, shooting in surviving locations like Curtis' flat and street, and shooting it like a set of photos from the time come to life.

Although I intellectually knew that the movie was in black & white, when it first came on I found myself at first surprised, almost cheated out of color, expecting it would show up later in the movie as so many current filmmakers like to mix filmstocks for effect. Then I settled back, recalling how much I love b&w movies and enjoyed them throughout my youth, and relaxed to the look. It turns out to be the absolute right choice, perversely draining the depression out of a movie that would have been too kitchen-sink unbearable in color, and reinforcing the period as no art direction would. Not only is 1970's Manchester well-suited to the limited tonal palette, but there are very few images of the band in color. Even the cover of their final album features a black & white photograph -- of two mausoleum statues.

Then the story Corbijn tells is anything but black and white. As Deborah Curtis, Ian's young cuckolded working class wife, top-billed Samantha Morton doesn't fall into any cliched pathos-generation tricks. Deborah is a sensible woman who first noticed Ian's lyrical talent and loves him to the end, even if she's decided that divorce is the only way forward. Curtis himself is portrayed as a young intellectual and reasonably dedicated civil servant who's come to see his marriage and fatherhood as an irrevocable mistake. (It's also a bit of a revelation that Curtis was so enamored of David Bowie, but it provides a key to understanding his vocal style.) The movie does a good job of showing some of the hallmarks of suicidal depression, i.e. the consistent lack of appetite and the constant inner tension that metastasizes into unbearably ceaseless self-loathing.

Along the way there's the fresh handling of the "B" plot of Ian joining the band and their rise to fame. While some of the tale is more apocryphal than true (record label owner Tony Wilson didn't actually sign a contract in blood), it's got the wry and dry midlands sense of humor, best carried by Tony Kebbell as band manager Rob Gretton. It's a measure of the movie's drive for originality that when expected to cover for Curtis to his wife, Gretton takes an unexpected path.

Ultimately it's the pulse of the times, the band, and the stilled pulse of Curtis himself that provide the pleasing energy of the film, a ripe contender for top rock biopic ever. If there was any disappointment for me it was that Corbijn didn't include my favorite Joy Division song, the side two opener to Closer, "Heart and Soul". Per Curtis, in words his wife, fellow band members, and mistress later realized they had not paid proper attention to:

Existence well what does it matter?
I exist on the best terms I can.
The past is now part of my future,
The present is well out of hand.
The present is well out of hand.

Heart and soul, one will burn.
Heart and soul, one will burn.
One will burn, one will burn.

In Control, it burns bright.