Movies From the Hat IV #13 – Jakob’s Pick – Control (2007)

This is my 2472nd Review

Thanks to Jakob of JumpCutUK for this recommendation.

Here are his thoughts on the film.
 “Existence. Well, what does it matter? I exist on the best terms I can. The past is now part of my future. The present is well out of hand. ” Ian Curtis

Number of Times Seen – 1 (1 Sep 2016)

Brief Synopsis – Biopic of the life of British music phenomenon Ian Curtis of the Band Joy Division who became very popular in the late 1970’s.

My Take on it – Here is another film recommendation that I knew nothing about.

It reminded me in many ways of many other biopics of musicians, but this was a bit different because it shows us how he was dealing with medical issues that were beyond his control.

This is quite ironic because of the fact that he spent his entire life keeping things in order and the main thing he couldn’t control was his own medical condition.

The thing that bothered me the most here though was the pacing, I found that this film moved so slowly that even certain scenes felt as if they stood still.

This led me to lose interest in what was going on a few times, but it wasn’t difficult to find my way back a scene or two later.

I have a feeling that had I actually known more about Ian Curtis and Joy Division, I probably would have enjoyed it more, but that in and of itself is part of the problem; biopics should be standalone and explain everything to you in an interesting way without the need of prior knowledge.

In the end, I found this to be an average biopic.

Bottom Line – Nice look at the life of someone who tried to keep control of so much but was plagued with lack of control of other things in life. The movie moves along very slowly and there were a few instances where I lost interest because the pace was almost a standstill. I think that if I had been more familiar with Curtis and Joy Division, I might have enjoyed this even more, but as it stands, I found it all to be a pretty average biopic.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia –  The actors playing Joy Division learned how to play the songs themselves. So the scenes where the band is playing live is not from tape, but actually the actors playing live. (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy

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