Joy Division; Prague

This week, amongst a flurry of tunes, pizza and beer, Luna Outdoor will premier the documentary Joy Division. Riding fresh on the coat tails of Control’s recent success, one can confidently expect a large turn out for this, more rigorous, exploration of the Manchester band’s inspiring start and tumultuous decline – though the two could hardly be considered mutually exclusive. For starters, Joy Division’s director Grant Gee (who has previously worked on documentaries about Radiohead, Gorillaz and Scott Walker) has chosen to look more broadly at the context of the events. Through never-before-seen footage, audiotapes, personal photos and period films, Gee creates a collage that represents not only the band, but also their city and the musical/artistic movement that they belonged to. As the late Tony Wilson states in a voice-over that opens the film, the story of Joy Division is also the story of Manchester, and of a city awakened by their music. Indeed, it’s hard to watch the documentary without feeling drawn into the infectious punk atmosphere of 1980s Manchester, alive with new hope and music.

Strikingly intimate interviews with the surviving members of Joy Division, fellow musicians and musical icons, and even with Anton Corbijn (the director of Control) are slotted into the footage, adding detail and cohesion to the period collage. While many Joy Division ‘anecdotes’ (such as their famous meeting at Manchester Hall, their involvement with Tony Wilson and so on) have been milked dry by the double impact of Control and 24 Hour Party People, it is surprising to learn that these interview subjects still have something fresh to offer. Gee has directed them to speak with great sincerity and insightfulness – one notable example being the way in which the band members and Annike Honore (the Belgian journalist with whom Curtis had an affair) reflect upon how everyone seemed to ignore the darkness of Curtis’s lyrics. Similarly, it’s touching to see the Joy Division story carried beyond Curtis’s death, to look at the musical and cultural legacy that the band left behind them before going on to become New Order.

Rating: 7.1

Every film festival has to reach its nadir, and for PIAF’s Lotterywest Film Festival, it seems that point is Prague, which screens at Sommerville from next week. The latest film from Danish director Ole Christian Madsen (Kira’s Reason – A Love Story, Angels in Fast Motion) is a dark look at both the practical and emotional aspects of grieving, and how the two intermingle. Christoffer (Mads Mikkelson – After the Wedding, Casino Royal) and Maja (Stine Stengade – Kira’s Reason) are a couple of 14 years, whose marriage is tested when they travel to Prague to retrieve the body of Chrostoffer’s dead father. Having not seen his father since he was abandoned by him 25 years ago, Christoffer appears unfazed by the death, but is forced to leave his emotional plateau after Maja confesses to having an affair. Now trapped together in a city they both seem to despise, the couple share their final days amongst increasing levels of tension, while Christoffer simultaneously deals with his father’s lawyer, house-keeper and some ‘unexpected’ revelations.

Unfortunately, the surprises that send Christoffer over the edge are all too easy to spot from a mile away, while the extreme close-ups of a hand held camera (here an ear, there an eye) suggest a level of pretension at odds with the utterly predictable nature of the script. Madsen obviously thought he was creating something deeply moving, but whether it is the trite nature of his dialogue, or some less-than-perfect performances, at least two of the film’s central revelations were enough to send a ripple of groans/giggles through the crowd. While several scenes are genuinely emotional and thoroughly well-acted (particularly where Mikkelson is concerned), they fall flat when viewed in the context of the whole film. In the end, Prague makes a mockery of the deep themes it is presenting, and the emotional story that it is attempting to share.

Rating: 5.1

Interview with Sam Riley

Post-punk pioneers, Joy Division, are one “those” bands.. One of those bands that inspire a quasi-religious following and widespread reverence from fans and musicians alike. One of those bands that never seem to stop attracting new listeners, topping various “all-time best song lists” over years thirty years after their break-up. One of those bands with a frontman whose dark decline that has now become a pop culture legend.

It was, therefore, a big deal when production began on Control – a new, no-holes-barred biopic that charts Ian Curtis’s rise to success, and subsequent descent into personal darkness. From the outset, director Anton Corbijn made clear his intentions to look beneath the surface of Curtis’s facade, and to not shy away from his infidelity or battles with epilepsy and depression. Little-known actor Sam Riley (who ironically played Mark E Smith in 24 Hour Party People before his short role was cut in post-production) is happy to laugh about the pressure he felt taking on the role of Joy Division’s frontman. “It was out of my control,” he jokes, somehow not yet sick of a pun that he must have heard many times before.

“He wasn’t anyone I personally revered or idolised,” Riley eventually admits, “so it wasn’t until I went onto the internet and looked at a Joy Division forum that I started really panicking. After it was announced that I would be playing Curtis, I foolishly went back to look again and there was mass panic and fear. The fans were all looking at photos of me and commenting on how I looked nothing like Ian. Which I don’t think I do normally – no one has ever said I have done. And then the fear kicked in.”

Corbijn, however, obviously saw something that Riley didn’t. He claims to have seen “something of Curtis” in Riley the first time he laid eyes on the young actor. “I can’t imagine that to be true,” Riley denies, “I think he’s a photographer, and what he saw was a snapshot of me; outside, smoking and shivering in the cold, wearing an overcoat. No, I don’t think we have the same aura. Though I don’t know what his was, as I never met him.”

Either way, Riley’s performance has been celebrated by even the most devoted Joy Division fans, with New Order themselves applauding the film. Riley credits his success to the fact that Corbijn never asked him to play a “rock star.” He explain; “I could deal with the pressure because my instructions were to play a young man with an exceptional talent, who chased his dreams, fell in love with two people and then had it all get too much for him – not to play the son of God.

“After all, [Curtis] is not a classic in many respects,” Riley continues, “On stage, he isn’t the strutting rock star that a lot his heroes are. He looks very vulnerable at his most manic, and the clothes and the hair almost make him look childlike. And it’s not all sex, drugs and rock and roll – the rock and roll was his life passion, the drugs were prescribed medications for epilepsy, and the sex was with his wife and girlfriend, who he loved. So it’s not the classic rock story in any respect.”

Rather than merely replicating the exterior of the musician then, Riley dove into an intense research stage, focusing his attention upon the singer’s complex interior and writhing contradictions. He read and re-read Deborah Curtis’s novel Touching from a Distance (which details Curtis’s infidelity and was the greatest inspiration for the Control screenplay). “The book really gives you the most insight into him as a character,” he emphasises, “And it isn’t the most flattering look at a young man, but that didn’t put me off; that was just more interesting. He was very complicated, he was very young, and he was only a teenager when he got married. I mean that wasn’t so unusual those days, but it was still probably too early to make that decision. And he was petulant and moody, but also good fun and very compassionate towards people, from all accounts.”

In attempting to fully understand Curtis, Riley also drew upon his own experience as a musician, comparing it to Curtis’s. “There are actually some things we have in common,” he explains, “We both dreamt of being rock stars, we both came from the same place in England, and I understand some of his fears. I’ve never contended with epilepsy and depression, but once you start seeing the world through his eyes than it’s not particularly hard to understand the dilemmas and problems he was faced with. He wasn’t a conscience-free rock and roller who I might have had trouble relating to, he was a thoughtful guy and really resented himself for putting his wife and child in that position.”

It would appear as if Riley actually encountered more challenges in attempting to capture the more superficial details of Curtis. He recalls how he spent seemingly endless days watching the very limited selection of Joy Division video footage available today (totalling in just over one hour), in an attempt to appropriately gauge Curtis’s idiosyncratic dance moves. “The only connection we have musically is that the music I played was similar to the music that Ian looked up to, because I revered David Bowie and Iggy Pop and The Doors, just has he did. But there’s where the similarities end, in terms of our performance roles.”

Nonetheless, after many days of dance practise, Riley felt he had finally managed to grasp something of Curtis’s style. He also believes that the live music scenes (in which he actually sings, almost perfectly replicating Curtis’s distinct tone), just “clicked” because of the particular casting choices. “We loved playing together, we loved being a band,” he recalls enthusiastically, “and once we’d got our costumes on had our haircuts it all just fit. You’d have a tough time convincing us that we weren’t Joy Division, because we loved it.”

This sentiment ideally echoes the advice that Riley received from Bernard Sumner himself (guitarist and keyboardist in Joy Division), when several of the cast members made the most of an invaluable opportunity to meet New Order. He remembers; “The weekend before we were starting filming, they happened to be playing Liverpool, so they invited Anton [Corbijn], Samantha [Morton, who plays Deborah] and the boys [in the band] to go up and watch them play. Then we met them backstage, and everyone was talking to their counterparts, though mine wasn’t there of course. I spoke mainly to Bernard, who gave me confidence because he said that I had something about me that was similar to Ian. And he said that we should have fun, because they had fun being Joy Division. And that was the sum total of advice that we received from New Order, because that’s the way that they are. “

At this point Riley again mentions how happy he was to later learn that New Order “loved the film.” I point out that that is indeed a compliment of the highest order, and he retorts with another laugh, “Indeed! You could actually say that it was a compliment of the highest new order!”

Control, Eastern Promises, Waitress

Many biopics suffer under a pretty formulaic treatment. Director falls for musician; director idolises musician; director channels sloppy sentiments into movie; director portrays musician in an idealistic, and often very simplistic, manner. This, however, is exactly where Control shines. The cinematic debut of Anton Corbijn (previously famous for rock photography and music video direction) presents a realistically balanced portrait of Ian Curtis (Sam Riley), the enigmatic frontman of Joy Division. You’ll find no pedestals here; instead, the many varying sides of Curtis’s personality are laid bare, allowing audiences to form their own opinions. Charting his development from a bored recruitment officer to a tortured musical icon, this film closely examines his relationship with his wife, Deborah (Samantha Morton), and later his affair with Belgium journalist, Annik Honore (Alexander Maria Lara). The narrative’s inevitable pull towards Curtis’ disintegration and suicide makes it all the more enthralling viewing. Filmed entirely in black and white, this is a film that has truly succeeded in capturing the bittersweet tone of the period while simultaneously maintaining a captivating level of character complexity. Aside from some of Riley’s dance moves (that feel more robotic than the awkward motions of Curtis), this is a near-flawless film that should satiate film-lovers and Joy Division devotees alike.

Rating: 8.8

Canadian director David Cronenberg has long been polarising audience opinion through his extreme treatment of the human body. Under Cronenberg’s direction, the body is transformed into a piece of meat. If it is male, it will be thrown around the set with the set with all the weight of a worthless prop, inevitably ending up as a mass of slaughtered, bloody pulp. If it is female, it will become the star of an explicit sex scene, often being similarly treated as a prop that catalyses male pleasure. Cronenberg maintains this attitude in his latest thriller, Eastern Promises – a London-based tale of Russia’s global criminal brotherhood, Vory V Zakone, and the innocent midwife, Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), who is inexorably drawn into their world. At long last, though, Cronenberg’s physical and sexual excesses do not feel arbitrary. Instead, these extremes work to develop the film’s dark and threatening tone, to explore the limits of the male characters and to further the tautly thrilling narrative progression. Even the performances feel far more even-handed than in Cronenberg’s previous offerings, with Viggo Mortenson ideally capturing the moral ambiguity of Nikolai Luzhin (the official chauffer of the brotherhood) and Watts perfectly articulating Anna’s conflicting emotions of fear and curiosity. Combine this all with a genuinely tense, interesting and fairly complex storyline, and what you have here is one of Cronenberg’s most mature and impressive offerings thus far.

Rating: 9.0

There are plenty of sweet little comedies out there, and while many may succeed in producing that familiar, warm, fuzzy feeling, few do so with the aid of characters that are as truly memorable as those featured in Waitress. Written and directed by Adrienne Shelly (who also acts in it), Waitress in set in America’s deep south, where Jenna (Kerri Russell) dreams of escaping her loveless, abusive marriage, until an unexpected pregnancy throws her plans of course. The pregnancy, which she initially sees as a curse, gradually evolves into a blessing-in-disguise, as it introduces her to the town’s new doctor, with whom she begins a risky affair. The film suffers a little from some uneven pacing, some jerky shifts in tone, and also from some unnecessarily repeated messages (a husband doesn’t need to shout “Make me my dinner” ad nauseum for us to understand that he’s a bad guy!). Nonetheless, though, Russell has made the most of this showcase, channelling a grace to rival Natalie Portman, while all the supporting cast members are equally memorable in their portrayals of the idiosyncratic characters that surround her. And don’t even get me started on the electric chemistry that sparks between Jenna and the doctor (Nathan Fillion). With a powerfully heart-warming conclusion, Waitress may well be the romantic comedy of the year.

Rating: 8.9