Over recent weeks the music and broadsheet press have been fascinated with the life and tragic death of legendary Mancunian Ian Curtis whose brief career firmly placed his band ‘Joy Division‘ in the annals of UK music history. For those of you woefully uninformed, ‘Joy Division’ were the late 70’s precursor to ‘New Order‘, concocted in the grim streets of Manchester they were a idiosyncratic indie band with gloomy lyrics, sullen baselines and a miserable demeanour. I like ‘em.

 

I always prefered ’Joy Division’ (hey, they were miserable and gained notoriety in the 1980’s so it’s not really a stretch), to ‘New Order’, although that incarnation did produce two wonderful tracks so it was with some trepidation that I approached this film. Biopics, especially music themed ones always seem to fall short of their subject matter – the only excception that I can recall is Hal Ashby’s ‘Bound for Glory‘. More encouraging however was to see that Anton Corbijn was the director, albeit on his first feature. Corbijn met and photographed Curtis and the band so there would be some sense of authenticity and he has certainly proved his adept ability to shoot moody, atmospheric visuals through a series of music videos for the likes of ’Depeche Mode‘, ‘U2‘, ‘David Sylvian‘, ‘Nirvana‘ and ‘Henry Rollins‘.

So it is a relief to report that this, like ‘Withnail’, is that rare beast – a great and uniquely British film. Corbjin captures that miserable era perfectly (OK, I was six at the time but this is how it feels by osmosis), the hopelessness of the dole queue tempered with the possibility of kudos, respect and a magical chance of fame grinding against the real life responsibilities of a young confused man with a wife and new child – too much, too soon – especially when this was the last film you saw.

Sam Riley is a revelation, investing some of his own melancholy attitude to his performance as Curtis. Music video directors graduating to feature films is always a risky process. Although as I mentioned above you can be sure of a stylish looking film, the skills required to deliver an eye-catching three minute promo video pale in comparison to those required to deliver a coherent, engaging and two hour feature. Hell, even Bradshaw gave it a positive review.