"Control"

"Control" isn't a movie about Joy Division, or even a cautionary tale about a rock 'n' roll casualty. Corbijn, who has directed numerous music videos and who, for some 30 years, has been one of the foremost rock 'n' roll portrait photographers, makes his feature debut with this picture, and although it at times has an almost fable-like quality, it's mostly just an intimate recounting of one particular human tragedy. (Read my interview with Corbijn here.)

"Control" is based on the memoirs of Deborah Curtis, Ian's widow. (She's also one of the movie's producers.) It's both a portrait of a person and a snapshot of a time. Curtis may have been an introspective and moody sort to begin with: An early scene shows him reciting Wordsworth to his clueless best pal, and to Deborah, who's suitably intrigued. But not long after the band started up, he was diagnosed with epilepsy, and the cocktail of drugs used to treat the ailment was unpredictable and only marginally effective. His new life as the most unlikely sort of rock star -- on-stage, he was jittery and charismatic, qualities that Riley captures perfectly here -- conflict with his life at home as a husband and father. He meets a sophisticated but sweet journalist named Annik (played by a lovely young actress named Alexandra Maria Lara), and the two tumble into a tender affair that rattles everything he'd always thought was safe and secure about his life.

"Control" nails the vibe of its era, but it also evokes a feature of rock 'n' roll that can't be confined to a specific time or place: The feeling of seeing a brash new band in a tiny club and feeling as if a whole new life is opening before you. (The actors perform the songs themselves, and while Joy Division purists may complain about that, the numbers have both energy and gravity, and they suit the movie perfectly.) Corbijn and cinematographer Martin Ruhe shot the picture in lustrous black-and-white.

I've heard people describe the look of the picture as "stark" and "gritty," but I can't see it: This is, by far, the most rapturously beautiful-looking picture I've seen all year. The images have an almost satiny texture. Corbijn's shots are always meticulously composed, as you'd expect from a filmmaker with a background as a portrait photographer, but even though they sometimes betray only the smallest traces of movement, they're always alive, never static. The look of the picture reminds me of the early Beatles photographs taken by Astrid Kirchherr: Corbijn picks up on everything that's innocent and open about these kids' faces (and they were, after all, just kids). The suggestion is that they were standing on the cusp of something massive and overwhelming -- that they'd been granted a wish that could either make or destroy them.

The Manchester music scene has been the subject of a previous picture, Michael Winterbottom's buoyant, expressive "24 Hour Party People." But "Control" is a very different movie -- perhaps less of an insiders' picture, one that music snobs may not like, but one that "real" people will easily respond to. I saw "Control" first at the Toronto Film Festival, and later at a screening in New York. After the New York screening, a woman who was perhaps 10 years older than I am (in other words, not someone you'd automatically put in the Joy Division demographic, if we care to delineate such a demographic at all) approached me. She had clearly loved the movie -- she'd stayed until the very last credit had rolled away -- and she wanted to know: What happened to the band after Curtis' death? Did they break up? Did they ever get to America?

I explained to her that the band had reformed under the name New Order, and that although Joy Division's trip to America had of course been canceled, New Order had played here many times. She told me she'd known nothing about Joy Division going into the movie, but that she recognized most of Curtis' literary references. (There's a shot in the movie of Curtis' bookshelf, laden with the likes of Burroughs, Ginsberg and J.G. Ballard.) This woman's response confirmed for me that Corbijn's movie isn't just for the faithful. Instead of painting a tiny, cramped picture intended only for the elite, it opens up one small corner of the world for everybody. "Control" is proof of the way the music of someone else's life can suddenly and magically become your own.

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