Having exhausted the merchandising possibilities of box sets, lunchboxes and inaction figures, the executors of Kurt Cobain’s estate have lined up a writer for a biopic of the rockstar. It makes me want to curl up on the couch, strap on the headphones and listen to In Utero because biopics are inevitably a letdown compared to a band’s audio-only output.
Either such films feature that cookie-cutter pyramidal plot I’ve written about before (say, for Walk the Line or Dreamgirls). Or as with Control, which I saw tonight during a sold-out Film Forum showing, they’re no more intriguing when presented as a flat stretch of fanboy facts. Joy Division never had a thrilling career to begin with: they formed, released two alien punk-pop albums that later proved extremely influential, kicked around Europe on tour, then ceased to exist. Their lead singer, Ian Curtis, hung himself in his estranged wife’s kitchen on the eve of a potentially career-altering American tour, forever sealing the tormented-genius-dies-young mythology, an archetype profitable both emotionally and economically.
Ian’s the focus of this film and the actor who plays him, Sam Riley, resembles him very nearly, with the wicked grins, shifts of hooded eyes and robotically flailing limbs the real Curtis exhibited onstage, and sometimes off. Longtime celebrity photographer, first-time director Anton Corbijn has filmed Control in stark beauty; every first frame of each shot is composed so meticulously it could stand alone as a Corbijn photograph in ultrahigh-contrast black-and-white.
The whole thing is just such a slog. Joy Division made mostly glum music, lyrics of isolation bleated in Curtis’ weirdly deep baritone singing voice, as swampy guitars and mechanical drumbeats swirled in basement echo. Stack atop that the gloom of working-class England in the ‘70s, Curtis’ epileptic seizures, his lovetorn confusion between his young wife (a frumpy and deluded Samantha Morton) and his European mistress (Alexandra Maria Lara), a mostly diegetic soundtrack of murk from Bowie, Iggy and Roxy, plus, you know, the whole suicide thing, the buildup for which consumes the final second hour of the film, and Control clouds over as a major bummer.
A scene in 24 Hour Party People suggests that, contrary to popular myth, Joy Division wasn’t all doom and gloom by recreating a scene of the group playing a gleeful cover of “Louie, Louie,” a rowdy club audience singing along. Control tries a smidge of levity, too: Curtis claims his favorite film is The Sound of Music, and after Riley, the film’s best performance is easily the exasperated, profane and very funny Toby Kebbell as the group’s den-mother manager, Rob Gretton.
But it’s all too little of interest and for too long. A woman in my row leapt to exit as the credits hit and I heard a fragment of her complaint—not soon enough—which I would agree with in reference to the movie, perhaps less so regarding the death of Curtis and Joy Division, which can also be good headphones music to listen to on the couch.