I guess that Anton Corbijn’s control was never likely to be the cheeriest of films. Charting the brief rise and fall of Joy Division, and concentrating on the demise of their lead singer, Ian Curtis through suicide at 23 I guess that casting Adam Sandler and making it into a slapstick comedy probably wouldn’t have been true to the subject matter. That said, there’s little in this film one could call life-afirming. Mostly it tells the story of a man slipping into an abyss he’s been slowly crafting for years while his friends look on a believe that he’s doing it for the sake of art. He’s definitely not.
I think my main problem this films suffers from is what I shall call Biopic Syndrome. What I mean by this is, for example: Deborah Curtis shouts and screams at Ian and the camera pans down to the title on the notebook he’s been writing in. ‘She’s Lost Control’ it says, as though the music of Joy Division was nothing other than a faithful retelling of a few of the more depressing moments of Ian Curtis’ final years. Surely life’s not that simple is it? I can’t imagine that Curtis was listening to the radio, dance, dance dancing when he thought ‘ooh, radio: a live transmission if you will… I could write a song about this…’
On the other hand, it’s a beautiful looking film and you can tell that it’s been created by a man, Corbijn, whose first love was photography. Every shot looks like a gorgeous, perfectly lit frame, straight out of the pages of a 1970s or 80s edition of NME. And you can’t argue that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He was there through a lot of this stuff - it’s where he made his name - and he worked closely with Deborah Curtis and based a lot of the film on her rather extraordinary (auto-)biography, Touching From A Distance.
This film is both easy to watch, insofar as it is utterly beautiful, and it is almost impossible to watch because of its subject matter, but then swap the words ‘watch’ for ‘listen to’ and you’ve got a pretty good description of Joy Division themselves.
Some people feel that Hammer and Tongs first foray into feature films, the ill-fated Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie was a bit of a disappointment, and yes, it was flawed, but it had some great moments as well. The opening was great, Martin Freeman was a perfect bit of casting, Marvin was a lot better than he might have been and even the choice of casting Mos Def as Ford Prefect worked a lot better then you might have imagined. Anyway, I rather enjoyed it. But this is not a review of Jennings’s first movie but what probably would have been his first movie, Son Of Rambow.
I’ve been hoping to see the film for over a year now, following the sparkling reviews it got at 2007’s Sundance. At that point I didn’t know too much about the actual plot of the film though and didn’t really know what to expect. As it transpires, the movie’s about a child from a Plymouth Brethren family (Will) who, through a chance meeting (as far as these things are possible in a secondary school) meets the local ‘bad boy’ (Lee Carter) who is making his own version of Rambo using his brother’s video camera. The interplay between the shy, loner, artist Will and ‘worst boy in school’ Lee is beautifully played
Although this is a comedy, and it is one of the funniest films I’ve seen in a long time, the characters are drawn extremely well, and other than the man trying to hit on Will’s mother, are rounded, likable and easy to understand.
So, Garth Jennings, who had been promising to make a wonderful film for really rather a long time now, has actually gone and done it. I still stand by the fact that Hitchhikers is not as bad as people have made out, but either way this film is as great as everyone says it is and is well worthy of your attention.
Back in what I guess would have been 1995, I watched, on TV, a live performance of the band at Glastonbury, and ever since then I’ve always wanted to see them in person. Fate, however, was not on my side. First geography was my enemy as they rarely performed outside of the capital or Bristol or places even further away for my non-driving 16 year old self. Then, in 1998 I was given a glimmer of what I was missing out on, when they released Roseland NYC Live, a beautiful album of the band performing with an orchestra. Then… nothing. They disappeared of the face of the planet, and I really thought that I was never going to get the chance to see them ever.
Now, almost a decade later, after the should-I-really-believe-it experience of hearing about the formation of the triumphant and spectacular Third, I have at last achieved my goal and seen them live. You’d have thought that 12 years worth of anticipation would have made it rather difficult for them to live up to my self-created hype, but they gave me everything I wanted and more.
Firstly, Beth seems remarkably shy, and appears to have posture problems, or perhaps no neck, but her performance was absolutely electric. She generally spends time when she’s not performing with her back to the audience watching the rest of the band, and frankly I can’t blame her for that - they’re an intriguing bunch. Creating the sounds that they do with a couple of percussionists (with one doubling as a DJ), a keyboard player, bassist and guitarist is phenomenal. Despite Beth’s shyness, she did pop into the crowd near the end to shake the hands of the front row and seemed (as far as one can tell) actually rather moved by the reaction the crowd gave throughout.
The setlist was very Third-heavy, which suited me, the rest of the tracks being the obvious ones of Dummy (Roads, Mysterons, Glory Box et al). I have to say that I don’t think I noticed anything from their second album at all, but I could be wrong.
It was a beautiful night, finishing with the two tracks I was hoping for most, Roads and We Carry On, and frankly I don’t think the gig could have been much more special. One of my favourite bands performing two of my favourite albums in my favourite venue. Wow.
