READ MORE: Critic's Choice: Best of 2007

PREMIERE'S REVIEW (posted 10/11/07)

Although it is, in point of fact, a biographical drama about the late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, Control, the debut feature by photographer–video director Anton Corbijn, is such a convincing, intimate, and beautiful movie that to refer to it as a biopic seems cheap. Control is a remarkably frank and empathetic film, shot in stunning black and white (Martin Ruhe was the cinematographer, although it's clear that Corbijn, some of whose most striking photographic work is in monochrome, had a huge say in the film's look) and showcasing one of the best performances of this year, probably this decade, the debut lead turn by young actor Sam Riley.

The picture begins in Northern England in 1973, depicting Curtis as a typically uncommunicative and arty teen in thrall to Bowie and Roxy Music. It follows him into young love, too-young marriage, his meeting with the musicians who would make up Joy Division (well played by Anderson, Pearson, and Treadaway, all of whom, along with Riley, do a creditable job of recreating Joy Division's sound — the actors learned how to play and sing for the film — in the rehearsal and concert scenes), young cult stardom, too-young fatherhood, discovery that he has epilepsy, young second love, domestic strife, depression…all the way up to his suicide in 1980 — at age 23! — mere days before Joy Division was to start its first U.S. tour.

Corbijn himself photographed Joy Division, and he directed the video for Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box," so he knows from what the media calls "doomed rock stars." Which makes it all the more impressive that Control never dips into the morass of doomed-rock-star cliché. Curtis here is a hugely sympathetic character who's never romanticized, and when he's being a shit, Corbijn lets him be a shit; there's no "he ain't no delinquent, he's misunderstood" nonsense here. The hopeless exchanges between Curtis and wife Deborah (played here with empathy and restraint by Morton; the film's screenplay is based on a memoir by the real Deborah Curtis) as the film nears its end lay bear Curtis's very real misery and confusion. He brings some of that confusion onto himself, by getting involved with an intriguing Belgian woman Annike (Alexandra Maria Lara), whose personality is something of a question mark — "Joan of Arc," sneers Toby Kebbell, as Joy Division manager Rob Greton, as she accompanies a hapless Curtis to his apartment in search of a crash pad. That confusion is only furthered by his epileptic condition, discovered under the most awkward of circumstances. Epilepsy also adds a sense of impotence to Curtis's confusion, and when he confronts — or rather refuses to confront — his situation via a self-pitying drinking binge, the sense of wasted potential the film conveys is palpable. But what's most extraordinary about the first three-quarters of the film is how it shows, but never tells; there's no psychologizing and there are no attempts to put you "inside" Curtis's head. As Curtis sees his world further spiraling out of his control, though, Corbijn and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh stray from this strategy a bit, introducing some voice-over interior monologue in a scene wherein a bandmate tries to sooth Curtis via hypnosis. This is hardly disastrous, but I would have enjoyed seeing Corbijn and Greenhalgh really stick to their guns on this point.

As spectacular as the rest of the cast is, it's Riley who owns the picture. (He hasn't been in much before, and funnily enough, he played the small role of Fall frontman Mark E. Smith in 2002's 24 Hour Party People, a more comic and freewheeling account of the Manchester scene of Joy Division's day; Smith, it happens, is the subject of a riotous joke in this film). It's not just that Riley gets Curtis's jerky dance moves (which always suggested the onset of a seizure) and distinctive singing style so down that it's thoroughly eerie. It's not just that he holds the screen whether his Curtis is brooding out song lyrics or ostentatiously farting in the dressing room. It's also that he's really, honest-to-God, got one of those movie faces that doesn't even come along once every generation. It's astonishing.

— Glenn Kenny