“When Ian Curtis, lead singer of the Manchester-based, post-punk band Joy Division, killed himself at age 23 in 1980, everything in the band's brief (two album) history suddenly became pregnant with portent.
“Everything, from the enigmatic album cover graphics to lyrics laced with graveside resignation suddenly seemed to foretell what had happened. Of such morbid matters rock cults spring eternal, and now Joy Division has the movie that lives up to the myth.
“As the photographer who captured the band at their most morose and wintry during their final days in Manchester, Control writer-director Anton Corbijn was both present and participant in the myth's inauguration. His movie, which is largely based on Curtis's widow Deborah's 1996 memoir Touching From a Distance, both expands and deepens the Joy Division legend.
“While on the narrative level, the film suggests that Curtis killed himself because he couldn't reconcile his duties as a husband with his burgeoning reputation. On another, Control is about a band forever trapped by the trance-like rhythms of its own destiny.” - Toronto Star
