Legendary Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis has influenced generations since his suicide in 1980 at age 23, but it’s only recently that his cultish fans can see him on the screen. In his first feature film, director Anton Corbijn, a music photographer who has directed music videos (Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”) and has influenced various bands’ visual output for years, chose to do a biopic instead of a documentary because he wanted to make a film about Ian, not Joy Division.
“Control is about a boy—where we see his dream and what happens when it turns out to be different than he thinks,” Corbijn explains. “And it’s a love story, so it’s universal. That you have great music in there is just a bonus.”
The script is based on a biography by Ian’s wife, Debbie Curtis (played by Samantha Morton), and is therefore written from her point of view. “To find Ian’s story, we interviewed the band, Ian’s girlfriend Annik and other people who knew him,” Corbijn says. “In the end, they all supported the script. For Debbie and Annik, they’re not ecstatic because what happened is still raw for them, but I think they’re both OK with the film. I wanted to keep it truthful, and I feel that’s what we’ve done.”
You photographed Joy Division. How well did you know Ian?
Not well at all. My photos of Joy Division became famous, so everyone assumes I had a deep relationship with them. But those photos were taken in 10 minutes, and that’s all I knew of them personally.
But I’d come from the Netherlands, which has a good social system, unlike England—especially the north of England, where there is poverty and everything was bleak and gray. So I think coming to England left a big impression on me: The movie is in black and white for that reason, because that’s how I remember England, and all the photos were in black and white.
You really capture that period. Was it difficult to find locations?
We shot in Macclesfield; the bits of the house where he lived were the actual house, and it has changed very little since he lived there. And Vaux is actually where he worked, and we shot it in real time, so it’s quite accurate to the way it was for Ian.
This is a very mundane, gray part of England. That fits my work as a photographer. I don’t generally photograph highlights in peoples’ lives. I feel it’s important to show that beautiful things can come out of that kind of gray, mundane environment—that you don’t need the best, most beautiful desk to write a great and beautiful song. A lot of great art comes from very bad circumstances. So the film’s quite human, I think.
Have you changed Ian’s story to make a better film?
Well we’re not making a miniseries, so we had to be economical to a degree that doesn’t affect how Ian is seen. For example, when Ian solicited to become the band’s singer, he’d found a notice at the Sex Pistols concert and called the phone number. But that detail is less important than just knowing that seeing the Sex Pistols gig prompted him to become a singer in a band.
After having lived with the spirit of Ian for such a long time, do you have a sense of why he hanged himself?
Well, he never called me before he did it, so we will always have to guess. But personally, I think it was the epilepsy, and especially the side effects of the drugs he had to take for epilepsy—they caused incredible mood swings, and he didn’t understand it, couldn’t control it. He felt responsible for taking the band to America, and was afraid of having a fit on stage and maybe destroying the band’s future. So, all the problems he had with the band and with his girlfriend seemed to take on unreal proportions.
The other thing was that, in northern England, people don’t really talk about emotions and so nobody in the band really listened to his lyrics until he was dead. There was no safety net for him.
Control is the second feature made recently about Ian and Joy Division...
Yes, [Michael Winterbottom’s] 24 Hour Party People is quite funny. And, apart from the way they treat Ian, I like it quite a lot. It was a caricature of events—that’s why it’s so funny. It touches on a lot of elements, but not very deep. My film basically touches upon one thing and goes all the way.
Most of the music in the film is Joy Division’s, right?
Yes, but whenever you see the actors playing, they actually are playing. Sam Riley [who plays Ian] is actually singing. It’s phenomenal to have actors learning the music and playing so well. It’s far better to hear them playing for real.
There are only two actual Joy Division tracks—“Atmosphere” and “Love That Tears Apart.” If people want to hear Joy Division they should play the records at home.
Sam Riley’s quite the find. He’s brilliant...
Yes, and it’s the first real film he’s acted in. He’s a singer who’d acted a bit in his teens. He was working a no-future job in a bar, and he threw himself into this completely. He looks a lot like Ian Curtis. He studied everything, went to the Epilepsy Society to learn about the disease. We studied everything we could find.
You know, Sam and me, we were the two virgins on this film, and we depended on each other; we wanted to do well for each other. And Sam was there every day and never complained. For him to be on the screen with the best actress of her generation, Samantha Morton, it’s phenomenal to hold your ground. And he has a kind of movie star look, so I think he will do interesting things in the future.
“Control is about a boy—where we see his dream and what happens when it turns out to be different than he thinks,” Corbijn explains. “And it’s a love story, so it’s universal. That you have great music in there is just a bonus.”
The script is based on a biography by Ian’s wife, Debbie Curtis (played by Samantha Morton), and is therefore written from her point of view. “To find Ian’s story, we interviewed the band, Ian’s girlfriend Annik and other people who knew him,” Corbijn says. “In the end, they all supported the script. For Debbie and Annik, they’re not ecstatic because what happened is still raw for them, but I think they’re both OK with the film. I wanted to keep it truthful, and I feel that’s what we’ve done.”
You photographed Joy Division. How well did you know Ian?
Not well at all. My photos of Joy Division became famous, so everyone assumes I had a deep relationship with them. But those photos were taken in 10 minutes, and that’s all I knew of them personally.
But I’d come from the Netherlands, which has a good social system, unlike England—especially the north of England, where there is poverty and everything was bleak and gray. So I think coming to England left a big impression on me: The movie is in black and white for that reason, because that’s how I remember England, and all the photos were in black and white.
You really capture that period. Was it difficult to find locations?
We shot in Macclesfield; the bits of the house where he lived were the actual house, and it has changed very little since he lived there. And Vaux is actually where he worked, and we shot it in real time, so it’s quite accurate to the way it was for Ian.
This is a very mundane, gray part of England. That fits my work as a photographer. I don’t generally photograph highlights in peoples’ lives. I feel it’s important to show that beautiful things can come out of that kind of gray, mundane environment—that you don’t need the best, most beautiful desk to write a great and beautiful song. A lot of great art comes from very bad circumstances. So the film’s quite human, I think.
Have you changed Ian’s story to make a better film?
Well we’re not making a miniseries, so we had to be economical to a degree that doesn’t affect how Ian is seen. For example, when Ian solicited to become the band’s singer, he’d found a notice at the Sex Pistols concert and called the phone number. But that detail is less important than just knowing that seeing the Sex Pistols gig prompted him to become a singer in a band.
After having lived with the spirit of Ian for such a long time, do you have a sense of why he hanged himself?
Well, he never called me before he did it, so we will always have to guess. But personally, I think it was the epilepsy, and especially the side effects of the drugs he had to take for epilepsy—they caused incredible mood swings, and he didn’t understand it, couldn’t control it. He felt responsible for taking the band to America, and was afraid of having a fit on stage and maybe destroying the band’s future. So, all the problems he had with the band and with his girlfriend seemed to take on unreal proportions.
The other thing was that, in northern England, people don’t really talk about emotions and so nobody in the band really listened to his lyrics until he was dead. There was no safety net for him.
Control is the second feature made recently about Ian and Joy Division...
Yes, [Michael Winterbottom’s] 24 Hour Party People is quite funny. And, apart from the way they treat Ian, I like it quite a lot. It was a caricature of events—that’s why it’s so funny. It touches on a lot of elements, but not very deep. My film basically touches upon one thing and goes all the way.
Most of the music in the film is Joy Division’s, right?
Yes, but whenever you see the actors playing, they actually are playing. Sam Riley [who plays Ian] is actually singing. It’s phenomenal to have actors learning the music and playing so well. It’s far better to hear them playing for real.
There are only two actual Joy Division tracks—“Atmosphere” and “Love That Tears Apart.” If people want to hear Joy Division they should play the records at home.
Sam Riley’s quite the find. He’s brilliant...
Yes, and it’s the first real film he’s acted in. He’s a singer who’d acted a bit in his teens. He was working a no-future job in a bar, and he threw himself into this completely. He looks a lot like Ian Curtis. He studied everything, went to the Epilepsy Society to learn about the disease. We studied everything we could find.
You know, Sam and me, we were the two virgins on this film, and we depended on each other; we wanted to do well for each other. And Sam was there every day and never complained. For him to be on the screen with the best actress of her generation, Samantha Morton, it’s phenomenal to hold your ground. And he has a kind of movie star look, so I think he will do interesting things in the future.
