The life of Ian Curtis of Joy Division in “Control”, the film

Control – UK, 2007

“The existence … what importance does it have? I exist better I can. The past is part of my future, and the present is out of control ». It is not anger that makes Ian lose control. It is the inability to understand, a radical extraneousness to himself that silences him and makes him indecipherable the rules of being in the world (exist?). He lets himself be transported, he does not have the helm of his life, and if he makes a choice, it is usually the wrong one. Getting married soon, having children, betray: is it easy to end up off the road, but was there a right path? How much can you go into a labyrinth?

Shot between Manchester and surroundings, in a melancholy and proletarian black and black, exact opposite of the colorful, sparkling and ephemeral London of “Velvet Goldenmy”, Anton Corbijn’s film gently follows the short journey of Ian Curtis, frontman of the Joy Division suicide in 1980 at twenty -three years. “Control” is not a biographical film, he does not try to analyze or understand: more than telling his protagonist, it would be said that the director accompanies him, and we with him. We look to live Ian, and more rarely we hear him speak, because he speaks little, he always appears embarrassed. We said it: it is not an angry, a rebel, and not even the classic “cursed poet”: he is alienated, far from himself. He speaks and thaws only with music: by writing the texts he finds the words to express the bewilderment, the crushing (“Love Will Tear US Apart”); His movements on stage, first Goffi then increasingly agitated, are dances on the edge of chaos, convulsive sobs that evoke his epileptic crises. In a sense, “Control” does not have a soundtrack: the images are the “visual column” of what the songs tell (“When your time’s on the door, and it drips to the Floor”; “and we would go on as Though Nothing was Wrong, Staying in The Same Place, Just Staying Out The Time” …).

The first song of the film, however, is not by Curtis but by David Bowie: “Drive-in Saturday”, from the album “Aladdin Sane” that Ian has just bought. It is 1973, from there we start, but the path does not bring far away: Ian was a comet. In the middle, the wedding in ’75, the Joy Division in ’77, many drugs, a lover, Annik, intriguing but also out of place, and two albums – not even the time to get to know his success.

Throughout the film, after all, nobody seems to know anything about him, not even himself (“It is as if I were not happening to me, but to someone who pretends to be me”), and not even we will have understood much more, in the end. Because there is no linear plot: even the story, like Ian’s life, turns in the round until everything collapses. This is the coherence of “control” which, however, for this reason, perhaps, did not have a great feedback outside of Great Britain and the audience of fans: shot with respect by the then newcomer Anton Corbijn (acclaimed photographer and director of music videos) and interpreted with empathy by Sam Riley, also to the cinematographic and magnificent debut in his depressed passiveness, the film does not offer a moral, Just a look at the abyss. The sparks remain, the tail of the comet, some heartbreaking verse and some very successful scenes, such as the execution of “Dead Souls” in front of Annik: on the small stage, fradicio of sweat, Ian lets the instruments run forward, waits in silence, seems to see something in addition to the audience or within himself, then begins to move, to get agitated, to sing (“Someone Take These Dreams Away ”…). There was a possible life, somewhere. Instead no.

The words of “atmosphere”, which run on the credits, seem a melancholy reproach to the boy who gave way: “Walk in Silence / Don’t Walk Away, in Silence”.

Trailer

Soundtrack