So, Can I Take You To The Pilot? Because That Is Your Song . . .

AND TODAY's offering is . . . Nope! Hey! Whoa, you missed it!

No? Well, I thought it was funny.

(It was a cheesebuger and fries.)

Today's movie, of course, was Control, which I swear I meant to watch back to back with the documentary Joy Division, but I simply don't think that can be done. And if anybody else out there wants to try it, fine by me. If you manage it, I'll give you a @#$%ing medal.

Control was good, if a bit stark, the way alot of biopics are, especially biopics in which the subject dies by the end of the story. This was also bleak, in a way that was a little more stark and quiet than I thought it ought to have been. But that is a minor quibble indeed. Also a minor quibble: I thought they made Ian Curtis out to be a bit more of an ass than he might have been in real life. That's based mainly on the way he was treated in Joy Division, which, of course, didn't make him out to be an angel either, so it's a doubly minor quibble.

So yeah, it was good, but I also think you'd have to be a pretty big fan of Joy Division (or have been a pretty big fan at some point) to appreciate it on all the different levels the filmakers provided. Otherwise, it's basically the story of a talented, charismatic, haunted guy who basically lost control over his life, eventually spiraled downwards into despair, and offed himself. Alot of the other stuff-- the Manchester music scene, the Sex Pistols, the DJ/manager, the role of the media in late 70's/early 80's music, the trans-european scene-- operated on a level of subtext such as to be only understandable via the kind of shorthand that fans of the band, or of the British new wave, would have available.

The major quibble that the mainstream reviewers seemed to have with it was that there wasn't alot of story to work with, so Sam Riley, as Ian Curtis, really didn't have alot to do. I disagree with that. Insofar as Riley's portrayal of Curtis was uncanny, that in itself would hvae been enough to watch. But he was also capable of thowing up some major subtext of his own, in the way that a character like Curtis would have been saying with his eyes all those things he wouldn't be albe to bring to his lips. Nicely done, I thought.

One last thing: I meant to mention int he review of Joy Division that one of my favorite uses of "Love Will Tear Us Apart," Joy Division's signature song, was in the flick Series 7: The Contenders, where it is intended to convey the romance between two of the would-be assassin characters as high schoolers. In the end it conveys not only their romantic entanglement, but also something both deeper and shallower: the faux-despair of two essentially selfish people who are more than willing to swear romantic love for each other, but completely unwilling to live up to it. There wasn't anywhere really apropos in the previous missive to tack it in, though, and since there isn't anywhere really apropos to tack it in here, either, I'll just stick it on the end, like using a feather boa to counter-balance a badly hand-made kite.

There. That'll do it.