Precious is a new-style weepie but one that is much more bracing than depressing
Precious
Theatre
Ian McKellen is captivating throughout. He delights in the play’s gallows humour, yet is also maudlin and poignant
Waiting for Godot
Theatre
Slight quibbles notwithstanding, this will set the West End’s stock riding high
Enron
Utterly, utterly brilliant. You really are in for a treat
Though 'Trilogy' has won rave reviews, I personally found myself exasperated after about an hour
We went on a quiet sunday evening and the food was excellent, but the experience let down by the service and ambiance
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Anton Corbijn.
Cast: Alexandra Maria, Sam Riley, Samantha Morton
Too much too young: Sam Riley and Samantha Morton as Ian and Deborah Curtis
"I wanted there to be poetry in the film, but I didn't want it to jump out at you," says Anton Corbijn, the photographer turned debutant director, of this touching film about Ian Curtis, the Joy Division lead singer who killed himself at the age of 23.
There is indeed a kind of poetry in this spare and monochrome movie, unexpected from a film-maker more familiar with the celebrity shoot. The world of back-to-backs, highrise horrors and cobbled streets is summoned up as if Curtis's background was as potent for him as his later success was dangerous.
He is presented as a working-class Macclesfield boy, finding employment as a benefits officer, despite walking into the Jobcentre in a jacket with "Hate" emblazoned across the back of it. He married a nice girl too young, had a child, struggled with the guilt of infidelity, and was painfully tongue-tied and introspective except on stage - though even there he struggled gawkily to express himself.
The film is touching because it is very honest: there is no attempt at a hagiography of the young man who became an icon for so many and died on the verge of his biggest chance, a tour with the band in America. Drink, drugs and epilepsy were among the reasons he killed himself, but the chief factor was his inability to cope with the strain of being a rock star when all he ever wanted to do was sing his songs in a recording studio.
His wife, Deborah, who wrote the book on which the film is based, is beautifully played by Samantha Morton. But it's the central performance by Sam Riley that really makes Control. For sheer truthfulness, he stands comparison with Tom Courtenay and Tom Finney in those British films of the Sixties. Corbijn's debut, in fact, has some right to be equated with such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
Musically, it is also exceptional. The performance scenes are not mimed, and Riley captures the weirdly gangling Curtis moves to perfection. No one could complain that the soundtrack - written by New Order, which includes the remaining members of Joy Division - isn't as authentic as it could have been. We get a real scent of a postpunk era of the late Seventies in which Joy Division had such a lasting influence, even if there is little analysis of the music.
There are faults in Corbijn's film which, even considering its solemn pace, could do with a few minutes' cut. It takes a long time for Curtis to become a musician in the beginning and then to decide that he'd had enough at the end. In between, however, this is one of the most impressive, least pretentious films about rock that has been made.
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