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Editorial Reviews
Control tells the remarkable story of Ian Curtis, lead singer of the influential band Joy Division and one of the most enigmatic figures in all of rock music. Based on his wife's memoir, Control follows Curtis' humble Manchester origins and his rapid rise to fame, tormented battle with epilepsy, and struggles with love that led to his death at the age of 23.
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful
By Cubist
Format:DVD
Ever since Ian Curtis, lead singer of the British band Joy Division, died in 1980, he has achieved the iconic status of an emerging artist showing signs of brilliance before meeting an early, tragic end. In Curtis' case, he committed suicide on the eve of his band's first American tour. His brief life has already been depicted on film in Michael Winterbottom's fast `n' loose look at the Manchester music scene of the 1970s and 1980s, 24 Hour Party People, but it was only for the first half of that film. Control draws most of its content from Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division, the memoirs of Ian's wife, Deborah, and is directed by music video maker Anton Corbijn. He not only directed the video for their song, "Atmosphere," but also shot some of the most memorable photographs of the band, making him the ideal choice to helm this film.
There is an audio commentary by director Anton Corbijn. With his thick accent, he's a little hard to follow at times but manages to cover the usual topics: casting choices, shooting on location, and so on. He praises the performances of Sam Riley and Samantha Morton while also pointing out technical details, like how the concert scenes where shot with hand-held cameras and everything else was done with steadicams. This track is a little on the dull side but Corbijn does impart interesting factoids and it was clearly a labour of love for him.
"The Making of Control" takes a look at how the film came together. Corbijn moved to England because of Joy Division and took iconic photos of the band. So, he had an emotional connection to the material. His black and white photos influenced his decision to shoot the film in a similar style. The actors who played the members of Joy Division talk about the challenge of playing people who are still alive, learning to play musical instruments, and the songs. This is an excellent featurette filled with loads of interesting information.
"In Control: A Conversation with Anton Corbijn" tends to repeat some of the information from the commentary track and the making of featurette. The director talks about how he discovered Joy Division's music and how he eventually met them. He touches upon how they shot in Ian's hometown for authenticity.
"Extended Live Concert Performances from the Film" allows you to see "Transmission", "Leaders of Men", and "Candidate" in their entirety.
In a nice touch, there are the videos for "Transmission," a powerful rendition done for live TV with a riveting performance by Ian, Corbijn's video for "Atmosphere" that is haunting as it was done after Ian's death, and The Killers' cover of "Shadowplay" which is surprisingly effective.
Also included is a "Still Gallery" with photographs from the film.
Finally, there are "Promotional Materials," trailers for the film, a blurb for Deborah's book about Ian, the soundtrack, and so on.
There is an audio commentary by director Anton Corbijn. With his thick accent, he's a little hard to follow at times but manages to cover the usual topics: casting choices, shooting on location, and so on. He praises the performances of Sam Riley and Samantha Morton while also pointing out technical details, like how the concert scenes where shot with hand-held cameras and everything else was done with steadicams. This track is a little on the dull side but Corbijn does impart interesting factoids and it was clearly a labour of love for him.
"The Making of Control" takes a look at how the film came together. Corbijn moved to England because of Joy Division and took iconic photos of the band. So, he had an emotional connection to the material. His black and white photos influenced his decision to shoot the film in a similar style. The actors who played the members of Joy Division talk about the challenge of playing people who are still alive, learning to play musical instruments, and the songs. This is an excellent featurette filled with loads of interesting information.
"In Control: A Conversation with Anton Corbijn" tends to repeat some of the information from the commentary track and the making of featurette. The director talks about how he discovered Joy Division's music and how he eventually met them. He touches upon how they shot in Ian's hometown for authenticity.
"Extended Live Concert Performances from the Film" allows you to see "Transmission", "Leaders of Men", and "Candidate" in their entirety.
In a nice touch, there are the videos for "Transmission," a powerful rendition done for live TV with a riveting performance by Ian, Corbijn's video for "Atmosphere" that is haunting as it was done after Ian's death, and The Killers' cover of "Shadowplay" which is surprisingly effective.
Also included is a "Still Gallery" with photographs from the film.
Finally, there are "Promotional Materials," trailers for the film, a blurb for Deborah's book about Ian, the soundtrack, and so on.
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
A lot of great films came out last year, 2007--No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, The Lives of Others, and so on--but I honestly can't think of a better one than this: "Control."
This is a gorgeous and skillfully done film--all awash in silvery starkness, in luminous black and white--and all feeling so genuine and so far from anything fake or phony. I am not the suicidal singer of a New Wave band, I am not in love with a French journalist, and I do not think I married too early, but watching this, the movie really put me inside the man's skin.
"Control" tells the story of Ian Curtis, Joy Division's ill-fated lead singer--as well as his unfortunate wife, his band, his manager, his label, and his lover--and it does so without resorting to making it a slick biopic or a phony depiction of celebrity. It is one of the realest feeling films I have ever seen, and yet it doesn't sacrifice anything compelling or filmic to be so. The story plows ahead with amazing music and a formidable drive, with scenes that are artfully shot and gorgeous to behold.
The film's final scenes are indelible, cut forever into my mind, and the feeling the film invokes is powerful. I have never felt more genuinely punk than after seeing this--leaving the theater, I wanted to rip benches out of the ground and attack speeding cars head-on. More than that, I wanted to walk back into the theater, get another ticket, and watch it again. (I'm not really that into Joy Division either--at least I wasn't before seeing this.)
"Control": Best Movie of 2007. And Best Music Movie in Decades. So well-made and flawlessly executed that it couldn't ultimately depress me--it could only excite me. It's amazing.
This is a gorgeous and skillfully done film--all awash in silvery starkness, in luminous black and white--and all feeling so genuine and so far from anything fake or phony. I am not the suicidal singer of a New Wave band, I am not in love with a French journalist, and I do not think I married too early, but watching this, the movie really put me inside the man's skin.
"Control" tells the story of Ian Curtis, Joy Division's ill-fated lead singer--as well as his unfortunate wife, his band, his manager, his label, and his lover--and it does so without resorting to making it a slick biopic or a phony depiction of celebrity. It is one of the realest feeling films I have ever seen, and yet it doesn't sacrifice anything compelling or filmic to be so. The story plows ahead with amazing music and a formidable drive, with scenes that are artfully shot and gorgeous to behold.
The film's final scenes are indelible, cut forever into my mind, and the feeling the film invokes is powerful. I have never felt more genuinely punk than after seeing this--leaving the theater, I wanted to rip benches out of the ground and attack speeding cars head-on. More than that, I wanted to walk back into the theater, get another ticket, and watch it again. (I'm not really that into Joy Division either--at least I wasn't before seeing this.)
"Control": Best Movie of 2007. And Best Music Movie in Decades. So well-made and flawlessly executed that it couldn't ultimately depress me--it could only excite me. It's amazing.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This film is based on Deborah Curtis' biography and so this "Ian Curtis" is the Ian Curtis that she knew and Control in most respects adheres to her interpretation of his life. But it should be noted that Deborah Curtis knew but one side of Ian Curtis' story, her side. And like any other point of view that might have been chosen to tell this story, this one is limited & distorted. The writer of the screenplay is fully aware of the fact that Deborah's perspective is a limited one (as all of our perspectives are) and the screenplay makes some attempt (though not enough) to find the Ian that Deborah did not know, and that maybe no one knew. To achieve this screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh balances Deborah's own remembrance with the remembrance of other key figures in Ian's life (parents, band mates, Belgian girlfriend Annik) to give us a more rounded look at what it might have been like to be Ian Curtis. Unfortunately, these additional perspectives do not amount to as much as one would have liked them to as Ian was apparently not particularly close or open with parents or band mates. (The film rarely shows Ian interacting with either.) And the girlfriend just seems like a very pretty, very fresh, very young smiling face. Most likely the band has their own story to tell, as does the girlfriend Annik. To Deborah, Ian Curtis was a husband and so her story is one largely dominated by domestic squables. After the fourth or fifth round of domestic argument the film begins to feel like a film about marriage and not about music. The over-reliance on Deborah's perspective/biography begins to feel like a liability before the second hour of this two hour biopic begins, and the second hour is almost entirely devoted to the last moments of marital woe that, according to Deborah, sparked the final act. But there is so much more to this story than the one that Deborah has to tell. In addition to Ian the husband, there is Ian the singer and performer. And, most importantly to fans, there is the Ian Curtis that wrote some of the most austere and hypnotic and compelling rock music ever recorded. This is what is really missing form the film: a sense of where the music was coming from. Certainly some lyrics can be explained as autobiographical confessions of self-loathing and regret but some are comments and critiques on modern life.
To listeners of Joy Division's postpunk sound what was immediately alluring was that it sounded nothing like punk. Punk was manic and Joy Division was subdued. The sound was hollow but hypnotic and the voice was full of romantic longings and yearnings for some kind of transcendence but the romantic longing was always accompanied by the feeling that there was nothing to be done with these feelings. If punk was about irreverence and having a rebellious larf in the face of authority, Joy Division was about looking for something to revere and finding that modern life gave man very little to revere. In the face of utter hopelessness, the only grace to be found was in the music itself because the music offered trance-like beauties unavailable in real life (Unknown Pleasures). To fans, Ian & the band were the rarest of things, the expression of a genuinely original sensibility/musical vision. Unfortunately, this is the part of Ian's story that Deborah has the least access to--the writer Ian and the stage Ian is someone she barely knew--, and so it is simply not dealt with. We get no sense of what music meant to Ian nor what he was looking for in it, and without some kind of understanding of the music it is very difficult to understand Ian. Instead we get a story about a relationship and a cliched one at that. Sympathetic as we are with Deborah, rock wives rarely lead happy lives, and in biopics they almost always look like obstacles to their more talented husbands artistic urges & drives. Thats true here as well. And sad as the relationship between Ian and Deborah was it is simply one part of a larger story.
The other perspective on display here is the directors. As one might suspect from that very romantic film poster, director Anton Corbijn knows Ian as a photographic object. And, as a visual object itself, the film is primarily a chance for Corbijn to display his own considerable gifts for grim yet starkly beautiful composition. From both the still photographs that he took of the actual band circa 1980 (which should have been included in the DVD extra gallery) and from the film itself, one can understand that Corbijn felt a deep connection to Ian & Ian's unique romantic/existential sensibility and vision. As compelling and convincing as the film sometimes is, it is a work of art made by an artist that has his own ideas about what made Ian what he was and what made the music what it was. But, like all great artists, Ian was more than just the sum of his many influences (William Wordsworth, Lou Reed, Brain Eno, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, Apocalypse Now, Werner Herzog...) and so no mere visual record of these influences and sources from which he drew will ever fully explain the artists own vision. Artists recognize greatness in others but the good ones always transcend their sources. Ian Curtis' true sources of inspiration are & will remain mysterious, no film can really know or show what Ian was or knew or what he felt when listening to a favorite song or reading a favorite book; no one can know what Ian was to Ian. Biopics are intriguing and frustrating because they are, at best, speculative. Though the film faithfully represents Deborah's version of things, the key moments in this life are ones that no one had any access to but Ian (how does anyone really know what he watched, or listened to, or thought in those last moments?). Faced with unknowability, it is our nature to be curious and to speculate but one should not mistake speculation for truth. As a result, the most valuable part of this DVD to those fans of Ian the artist and his formidable band mates (given short shrift in this film) will be the actual footage (not included in the actual film but included as a DVD extra along with Corbijn's 1988 video for Atmosphere and the Killers video for Shadowplay) of the real Joy Division playing Transmission.
To listeners of Joy Division's postpunk sound what was immediately alluring was that it sounded nothing like punk. Punk was manic and Joy Division was subdued. The sound was hollow but hypnotic and the voice was full of romantic longings and yearnings for some kind of transcendence but the romantic longing was always accompanied by the feeling that there was nothing to be done with these feelings. If punk was about irreverence and having a rebellious larf in the face of authority, Joy Division was about looking for something to revere and finding that modern life gave man very little to revere. In the face of utter hopelessness, the only grace to be found was in the music itself because the music offered trance-like beauties unavailable in real life (Unknown Pleasures). To fans, Ian & the band were the rarest of things, the expression of a genuinely original sensibility/musical vision. Unfortunately, this is the part of Ian's story that Deborah has the least access to--the writer Ian and the stage Ian is someone she barely knew--, and so it is simply not dealt with. We get no sense of what music meant to Ian nor what he was looking for in it, and without some kind of understanding of the music it is very difficult to understand Ian. Instead we get a story about a relationship and a cliched one at that. Sympathetic as we are with Deborah, rock wives rarely lead happy lives, and in biopics they almost always look like obstacles to their more talented husbands artistic urges & drives. Thats true here as well. And sad as the relationship between Ian and Deborah was it is simply one part of a larger story.
The other perspective on display here is the directors. As one might suspect from that very romantic film poster, director Anton Corbijn knows Ian as a photographic object. And, as a visual object itself, the film is primarily a chance for Corbijn to display his own considerable gifts for grim yet starkly beautiful composition. From both the still photographs that he took of the actual band circa 1980 (which should have been included in the DVD extra gallery) and from the film itself, one can understand that Corbijn felt a deep connection to Ian & Ian's unique romantic/existential sensibility and vision. As compelling and convincing as the film sometimes is, it is a work of art made by an artist that has his own ideas about what made Ian what he was and what made the music what it was. But, like all great artists, Ian was more than just the sum of his many influences (William Wordsworth, Lou Reed, Brain Eno, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, Apocalypse Now, Werner Herzog...) and so no mere visual record of these influences and sources from which he drew will ever fully explain the artists own vision. Artists recognize greatness in others but the good ones always transcend their sources. Ian Curtis' true sources of inspiration are & will remain mysterious, no film can really know or show what Ian was or knew or what he felt when listening to a favorite song or reading a favorite book; no one can know what Ian was to Ian. Biopics are intriguing and frustrating because they are, at best, speculative. Though the film faithfully represents Deborah's version of things, the key moments in this life are ones that no one had any access to but Ian (how does anyone really know what he watched, or listened to, or thought in those last moments?). Faced with unknowability, it is our nature to be curious and to speculate but one should not mistake speculation for truth. As a result, the most valuable part of this DVD to those fans of Ian the artist and his formidable band mates (given short shrift in this film) will be the actual footage (not included in the actual film but included as a DVD extra along with Corbijn's 1988 video for Atmosphere and the Killers video for Shadowplay) of the real Joy Division playing Transmission.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome movie!!
I am such a fan of Ian Curtis. I had no idea he had a wife and child. I really enjoyed this movie. So heart wrenching.
Published 7 days ago by Melanie A Alvarez
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent. Sad. Beautiful.
I loved this movie from start to finish. The soundtrack is fantastic (obviously), it is beautifully filmed, and Sam Riley is perfect, almost hauntingly so, as Ian Curtis.
Published 16 days ago by shopfemmefatale
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ian Curtis Biopic, from friend Anton Corbijn
Anton Corbijn directs his first major feature film-length production, about the short life of his friend, Ian Curtis. Read more
Published 1 month ago by R Stephens
4.0 out of 5 stars
Can't Take My Eyes Off It
In terms of story alone, this film is rather flat, essentially being a tale of "boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy meets another girl" combined with the story of an artist... Read more
Published 1 month ago by J. R. Trtek
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cult Classic
Great film that highlights the music of Joy Division. The soundtrack in the movie is excellent, making it an exciting movie to watch.
Published 2 months ago by Andrew
5.0 out of 5 stars
Subtitles
Hi, i just wanna know if the dvd contain spanish subtitles? Thanks i really would like to buy it, thanks.
Published 2 months ago by Maribel Leon
5.0 out of 5 stars
great movie
Let me just say, I have been a long time fan of the band. This movie documents the life of a troubled soul, who made us all feel his pain and gave us some great music along the... Read more
Published 2 months ago by sonabors
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow
I really, liked this movie. It has a awesome soundtrack. Love Joy Division, no other back to replace Joy Division
Published 2 months ago by Ernestine Ramos
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartbreaking film
The actors in this film really go above and beyond to bring viewers the story of Ian Curtis and Joy Division. Read more
Published 2 months ago by scrymsmary
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very personal and well filmed
I found this movie captivating, entertaining and well styled for its theme. It does an excellent job of illustrating how much this young guy had going on in his life, which,... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Erin Costanzo
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