Control - 21 February 2010

Principal cast: Samantha Morton, Sam Riley, Alexandra Maria Lara, Joe Anderson

Film notes: It helps to care who Ian Curtis and Joy Division were, and to know that Curtis committed suicide at 23, in the first burst of his singer-songwriter brilliance. It helps if your heart is prone to be "torn apart again" by Joy Division's plangent love songs. However, Control will repay anyone interested in the film portrayal of musical stardom—a genre dating from the first "talking picture", The Jazz Singer (1927), with the broadway star, Al Jolson, more or less playing himself. Anton Corbijn has not made a cult movie, but rather a study of success. The film is an evocative portrayal of the coexistence of great talent and personal distress. Yes, Corbijn honours both the memory of the influential post-punk band and the sensibilities of Joy Division's undying fan base—even those who were "there" in late-70s Manchester should find the concert scenes utterly convincing. Yes, the story of Curtis involves rock clichés—e.g. the star's sexual infidelity. But Control differs from many rock biopics by making questions of the clichés (what is the link between stardom and sexual liberty?), never assuming that outcomes are inevitable. Notably, Corbijn refuses to suppose that rock genius must kill itself, even if this rock genius did kill himself. The film shows the artistic process by which Curtis and the band crafted their repertoire and their performance style. It shows Curtis' struggle with an epileptic condition. It shows success, the traps of success, and it shows a decline into suicide. It meditates on these things, but does not claim God-like knowledge about what brings a man in his artistic prime, even if worried about his mental state, to take his own life.