Dean Peteet's blog

I recently went to see the film "Control". This is the story of Ian Curtis the lead singer of the Post-Punk legends Joy Division who on the eve of their first American tour, hung himself. The film was directed by famed Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn who was also a friend of the bands before and after Curtis's death. The film was partly based on the book "Touching from a distance" the biography of Curtis written by his widow Deborah. Deborah Curtis was also an executive producer of the film as well. Now, not only was I privey to the above information before viewing this film, but I was also a fan of the band's material, as well as their later post-Curtis incarnation New Order. On top of this I had also seen and enjoyed Michael Winterbottom's 2002 picture called 24hour Party People which was about the Manchester music scene and contained a pretty large junk of Joy Division in the film . What I expected to see was a bleak depiction of an angry morose kid who was full of himself. As the film would progress I would begin to see Curtis immersing himself into the rock'n'roll lifestyle of drugs, adultry and the usual bio-pic/behind the music spiral downward into suicide. Along the way I would also get to hear some great Joy Division tracks. So what I am trying to say ,is that I was pretty much prepared for what I was about to see. Or so I thought. What I got instead was a beautifully photographed black and white film about a young and nieve David Bowie fan who married at 17 and joined a band shortly afterward. He soon discovered that he was epileptic and has seazures frequently. On top of this while experiencing musical sucess he was also now a brand new father. As the bands success increases his relationship with his wife becomes more distant and he soon succums to the pressure to engage in an extra-marital affair, which only deepens his fall. What I saw in this film that I was'nt expecting, more than anything else was heart which was'nt hard with such a wonderful job done by newcomer Sam Riley. No this is not the self indulgent self-loathing punk I thought I knew, but someone falling underneath the crushing blows of life itself. This was So much the case that I found myself aching to pull Ian out his world and into mine to protect him from this disaster of a life that he was going through. It has been quite a while since I've seen such a powerful portrayel of the lostness and disconnectedness someone can feel when he has nothing to turn to. Anton Corbijn does not revel in the all too common chic morbidity that is so prevelent in many Idie music bio-pics today(like 24hour Party People) ,but instead we see an authentic morning for someone who did reflect true broken-heartedness.