Music video and rock doc veteran Anton Corbijn makes his narrative feature debut with this sobering biopic of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. Curtis is played brilliantly here by relative unknown Sam Riley who portrays the singer as a restless Manchester teen all the way through to his tragic death as an addled rock prodigy at the age of 23. Curtis married his childhood sweetheart, Debbie, (Samantha Morton) while they were only teenagers and they had their first child, Natalie, shortly after (Deborah Curtis is a co-producer for the film which is based on her biography of her late husband, Touching from a Distance). The domestic bliss of Ian and Debbie in their young lives quickly gives way to a strained relationship and persistent suspicions of infidelity. The film focuses most specifically on Curtis' main and most famous mistress Annik Honore (Alexandra Maria Lara ) with whom he famously shared a passionate affair. As if a broken marriage, a new born, and a burgeoning rock career were not enough pressure, Curtis was also plagued with bouts of depression and suffered from severe epileptic seizures. All of these troubles are thought to have led to Curtis' suicide in 1980 but his motivations at that time remain a mystery.Unlike other rock biopics that dwell of the melodrama and the mania of the rock and roll lifestyle, Control is not a flashy, exploitations distortion of Curtis' life. It's painfully authentic, conveying of Curtis' tragic tale with stunningly sparse and simple expressions of turmoil that boil down dilemmas to their simplest truths. It's a sedate sophisticated drama that captures Curtis torment without the feeling of being branded into a genre friendly formula film. It's its own kind of animal, form-fitted to suit the style and mood of Curtis' life and music rather than the latest in a long line of made to order biopics about embattled music icons.
Not enough could ever be said about Sam Riley's eerie, subdued performance as Curtis. It's a masterful piece of invisible acting that captivates our attention and explores the many layers of the character's mind without ever overthinking a single moment. He's an awkward wall hugger at times and elsewhere a brazen lightning rod, especially on stage where he showcases a raw passion and verve that's missing from his regular life. Riley delivers each scene so perfectly that at times the line between fact and fiction seem to blur. If the Academy Awards weren't so fixated on its own self-contained pool of famous faces, he'd be a shoo-in for a big win this Winter.
There should also be great respect laid at the feet of the brilliant Corbijn whose visual style here is pitch-perfect. Filmed in black and white with the on-location griminess of doc footage, Control sometimes seems as though it could have been culled from archive footage, particularly the brilliant recreation of Joy Division's famous performances. Corbijn also find ways to transform dull locales into striking images of beauty. He sticks largely to steady medium shots that frame the characters in front of breathtaking backdrops as if they were people in photographs that mysteriously came to life. The whole film feels like the live action adaptation of a comprehensive scrapbook and it has the look and personality of just such an honest and personal documentation of a life gone by.
Grade: A
