Control

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Control is a gripping rock & roll biopic centering on the legendary frontman Ian Curtis of late-seventies post-punk UK band Joy Division, and was adapted from the biography Touching From a Distance by Deborah Curtis, and is directed by Anton Corbijn. It tells a sordid yet youthfully optimistic tale of teenage school boy dreams of fame and notoriety, and how sometimes real life has other plans. Really bad, really shitty, awful plans. When Ian & Joy Division find themselves face to face with an onslaught of over-night success and crippling epileptic handicaps paired with infidelity and the naïve temptations of stardom that come in tandem with overt and misguided ambition, Control is the story of rock & roll's gritty and less appealing side of stardom.

I'm a huge Joy Division fan, and this film really pushed me over the edge on levels beyond just being a musician/fan of the band. I have had many friends in the professional music industry to varying degrees and the reality presented in this film isn't inaccurate. Sometimes life and things beyond control can weigh down the best of us and leave us hopeless, in submission, at the mercy of having to sacrifice our hopes and dreams for reasons bigger than ourselves. I actually saw this for the first time with one of my best friends, a stupidly talented and established professional musician, in the theater on his birthday in 2007. We spent a lot of time afterwards discussing how so much of art is 90% suffering and, if you're really fucking lucky, you see that other 10% of it pay off.

For the record- This very review was written upon his request. And how happy to oblige I am.

Director Anton Corbijn was not only the director of the film, but the official photographer for Joy Division and what I consider to be one of the best rock & roll photographers of all time. His accumulated perspective in the industry allowed him the ability to provide this harrowed tale the tone and representation it deserved as a result of his first-hand experience.

The cast is lead by Sam Riley, who won the UK equivalent of an Oscar for this role, and is absolutely amazing in his portrayal of Ian. Curtis's widow said he exuded Ian every way possible, and was uncanny in his performance.

Easily one of my favorite elements of this film that needs to be mentioned, Riley and the remaining cast as Morris, Hook & Sumner, are all musicians, so the performances in the film are all one hundred percent authentic. There's no dubbing here, folks. This is as real as it gets, and it's one of the best rock biopics I have ever seen, albeit having a slight bias towards the band.

If you're like me and love rock & roll & movies, please watch this. It's a great slice of rock & roll history you may not be privy to that you most certainly should be.

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