Control is now playing at the Uptown Theatre.
There is a wonderful moment the amazing bio-pic Control where Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division, walks to work from his parents home in suburban Manchester.
He has a job at a government employment agency, trying to help people
get on their feet. As he trudges through his quiet neighborhood, the
camera follows him, slowly, revealing Ian to be wearing a jacket with
the word "Hate" in white tape on his back. Curtis is young, so young,
barely 18 and already married, a child on the way and a three-ring
binder full of lyrics that would shake the world. But, the director,
Anton Corbijn has no use for the usual hysterics that would accompany
such a scene: Curtis is not gaped at as he walks around with Hate on
his coat, nor is he frowned upon by old biddies and squares who can’t
understand the raging poet. No, he nods hello to people, walks into
work, takes his coat off and begins. This is simply another day, with
real people, the same mundane reality that we all slog through, and the
one that inspired, and perhaps undid Ian Curtis.
Control is not a story of a young man raging against a society that does not understand him. If Control is to be believed (and I believe it wholeheartedly) Curtis does not hate the world, in spite of what his jacket says. Hate and frustration and an elusive loneliness grip him. But he cannot bring himself to loathe those kind people in his life. Perhaps, then he will have to hate himself.
Control is a meditation on a singer who you might say felt too much. Ian Curtis looked out his window at skies that were endlessly gray, at a wife who slept next to him and baffled him, and at a lover who inflamed him and left him equally baffled and was moved to write songs. Great songs. He was able to momentarily bat away the angst of youth onstage. Curtis worked at an employment agency and helped, really helped those poor souls who came to him feeling broken down by unemployment. He admired his parents, and wished he could get away. But when faced with that opportunity, he killed himself.
Directed by Anton Corbijn, who photographed Joy Division all those years ago (they thrived from 1976-1980, when Curtis committed suicide), Control reflects Corbijn’s deep respect for his subject. It perfectly examines the life that inspired the lyrics, and it respects the fact that we will never quite know the artist nor where he dug his inspiration from. We are given the big moments that fans of Joy Division fans long for: the marriage, the first studio session, the contract–literally signed in blood–with Factory Records that would make them stars, at least in England. We see the concerts, with Curtis dancing like a machine and gripping the mic for dear life. And we are given the small details that make one feel the torment that gripped Curtis and enriched the music he wrote: listening to David Bowie in his bedroom with the dim light from yet another cloudy day; a pint with his friends at the bar, or getting blitzed on stolen prescription drugs and wondering if that will be the sum of your days; dinner with the family you love but want to scream at for failing you in ways you can barely define yourself.
Why did Ian Curtis commit suicide on the eve of Joy Division’s American tour? Did he wish he could stay married and have a mistress on the side? Did his epileptic fits give him a terror of his own body? Or did he hear his own music and come to the conclusion that perhaps he just didn’t have much more to say. When we see where New Order, the band that emerged from the wreckage of Joy Division after Curtis’ death, we see that maybe the latter would have achieved great fame and success had they pulled of their U.S. tour. Perhaps as he closed in on success, Curtis realized success was not what he wanted. I don’t know what he wanted, Corbijn doesn’t know what he wanted, and probably this is due to the fact that Curtis himself didn’t know what he wanted from his art. "I exist as best I can," he said. In the end, existence wasn’t enough.
She’s one of those classical music babes—a twenty-something player who, on account on her good looks, packs no small amount of marketing punch. But the peripatetic violinist 
Between 
An amalgamation of indigenous ritual, Catholicism, and Mexican tradition, 
Also in honor of Día de los Muertos (and a good deal of filmmaking talent), the Walker opens the first session of its Cinematica series of Latin American film. For the next two weeks (and again in January), you can explore a broad spectrum of filmmaking styles from New Mexican Cinema. Quite fittingly, the series begins this evening with 
Art meets life in this informal, party-like performance replete with food and drink from the Cedar-Riverside area’s 
We first saw 
The Hold Steady
Next, I went into the wine store, where I learned that the 2005 Chard that was so widely talked about has all sold out and what they’re hawking now, for $3 a pop, is the 2006. So I bought a bottle, which the cashier kindly double-bagged for my mile-long walk home. I treated this wine like a prized White Bordeaux from 1998: chilling it at a careful angle, opening it as dusk fell, decanting it gently into a crystal glass. I took a sip and then another. And I had to admit, grudgingly, that it didn’t suck.