As much as you might kid yourself that you are offering an impartial assessment of a film, in reality your response is always going to be subjective. So I’m not saying Anton Corbijn’s Control was the best movie in Cannes this year, but this much I do know: it was the film I connected with most of all, the one that made the most profound impression. Then again, I only had to hear the first few bars of Joy Division to be putty in its hands. Nothing affects you as profoundly as the music you heard when you felt things most keenly, as a disaffected teen.
Control is the story of Ian Curtis, the troubled and ultimately tragic singer of the Manchester/Macclesfield quartet who later reinvented themselves as New Order. Feeling himself unhappily trapped by his baby with childhood sweetheart Debbie (Samantha Morton); conflicted by guilt at his affair with a glamorous foreigner (Downfall’s Alexandra Maria Lara); disoriented by his ever-worsening bouts of epilepsy – Curtis ended his own life in 1980.
The best decision rookie director Corbijn makes is the casting of the protagonist. By placing newcomer Sam Riley at the heart of the action, we have no problem believing in him as Curtis. A familiar face (Jude Law was mentioned at one point) might have been problematic. As for the decision to shoot in black and white, this helps root the film within a highly appropriate template of northern kitchen sink drama; happily, you can forget about all the moody monochrome bombast of Corbijn’s pop promos for the likes of Depeche Mode and U2.
When I visited the set of Control last summer, I was troubled by talk of Corbijn’s highly specific direction. “It was, ‘Stand like this, maybe open your mouth a little more at the end of sentences,’” said one of the young actors. More emphasis on the formal composition of shots than what the characters are feeling, in other words. I needn’t have worried. Corbijn hasn’t fallen into the style-over-substance trap that has ensnared many a photographer-turned-film-maker. It’s a confident directorial debut that suggests Control will not be the Dutchman’s only big-screen achievement.
Control, in cinemas on October 5
Read the myfilmsblog interview with director Anton Corbijn
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