Control (The Miriam Collection) | 
| Director: Anton Corbijn
Actors: Samantha Morton, Sam Riley (ii), Alexandra Maria Lara, Joe Anderson (vi), Toby Kebbell
Studio: The Weinstein Company
Category: DVD
List Price: $28.95
Buy New: $12.17
You Save: $16.78 (58%)
New (56) Used (13) from $8.88
Rating:  59 reviews
Sales Rank: 6227
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Ntsc, Widescreen
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 122 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.2 x 0.7
MPN: 81025
UPC: 796019810258
EAN: 0796019810258
ASIN: B00104AYGU
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: June 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
In his elegiac debut, Anton Corbijn combines the music film with the social drama to stunning success. Based on Deborah Curtis's clear-eyed biography, Touching from a Distance, Control recounts the wrenching tale of a working-class lad about to hit the highest highs only to be waylaid by the lowest lows. Born and raised in Macclesfield, a suburban community outside Manchester, Ian Curtis (newcomer Sam Riley in a remarkable performance) dreams of fronting a band. Just out of high school in the mid-1970s, he finds three like minds with whom he forms post-punk quartet Warsaw--better known as Joy Division (Riley and castmates ably recreate their somber sound). All the while, he falls in love, marries, and fathers a child with Deborah (Samantha Morton, turning a thankless role into a triumph). While Curtis should be enjoying parenthood and newfound fame, he's plagued by seizures. A diagnosis of epilepsy leads to powerful medications with unpredictable side effects. Then, while on tour, he falls in love with another woman. His solution to these problems is a matter of public record, but Corbijn concentrates on Curtis's life rather than his death. Just as Control establishes a link between such disparate black and white works as fellow photographer Bruce Weber's Let's Get Lost and kitchen-sink classics like The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, the Dutch-born, UK-based director presents his subject not as some iconic T-shirt image, but as a deeply flawed--if massively talented--human being. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Description
Control tells the remarkable story of Ian Curtis, lead singer of the influential band Joy Division and one of the most enigmatic figures in all of rock music. Based on his wife's memoir, Control follows Curtis' humble Manchester origins and his rapid rise to fame, tormented battle with epilepsy, and struggles with love that led to his death at the age of 23.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 54 more reviews...
 Joy Subtraction July 3, 2009
Richard G. Hine (amazon.com/dp/B001UG3BJK)
SPOILERS AHEAD....
Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division, killed himself in "gray and miserable" Macclesfield in 1980 at the age of 23. Anton Corbijn's "Control," shot in black and white, gets the gray and miserable parts of Curtis' life exactly right. The movie is based on a book by Curtis' wife Deborah. They were married when he was 19 and she was 18. They had a child. He was depressed. He joined a band. He began having epileptic seizures. He started cheating on his wife. The band started to become successful. The seizures got worse. The end.
Director Corbijn is known mainly as a rock photographer and, though well-acted, the movie feels a bit like a slideshow -- full of memorable (and depressing) imagery, plus concert performances that capture the look, feel and sound of Joy Division's live shows. As a biopic, it's a major contrast to a movie like "I'm Not There" which expands on the persona(s) of the artist and finds new ways to dramatize the impact of a creative life. "Control" reduces Curtis' life to an oppressive kitchen sink drama. It's realistic, but not uplifting. And you already know how it ends. If you know nothing about Ian Curtis and Joy Division you'll get a better understanding about his and the band's impact on the world by reading Wikipedia than you will by watching this film.
 MEDICORE June 4, 2009
ben redares (haifa Israel)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
IF YOUR OVER 25 CHANCES ARE YOU'LL UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS A SILLY MOVIE.
 a must see story of joy division May 31, 2009
Billyzspot (new york)
anyone who lived through punk and post punk should see this movie. anton corbin has proven his worth as a true chronicler of a most important era of music. try to see depeche mode to see where it all leads.
Beautiful and tragic May 26, 2009
rygeltheXVI
This movie documents the beautiful and tragic life of Ian Curtis the lead singer of the band Joy Division. I already knew the story of Ian Curtis' death on the eve of Joy Division's American tour, so I watched the movie already knowing how the story would go.
What makes this movie so great is the focus on the details from Ian's wife. I felt I gained more insight into how he dealt with his epilepsy and what compelled him to write music. The cinematography was beautiful in black and white. The concert scenes looked very authentic to actual live videos I have seen of the band. I thought the actors did a brilliant job representing the characters from one of my favorite bands.
No Exit May 17, 2009
Michael S. Mahoney (Louisville, KY United States)
Train wrecks are endlessly fascinating, especially when the passengers are young, so talented and so full of potential. "Control" gives us the disaster everyone now sees coming. The script is based on the book "Touching From A Distance" by Deborah Curtis, wife of the late Ian Curtis. Her memories and director Anton Corbijn's eye for texture drive this rather slow, mannered take on the Joy Division story. Sitting room aridity and Euro artiness seem inevitable with this particular concoction. It's a worthwhile exercise but fortunately just one version of a music phenom's howl in the night. The recent Joy Division documentary is an essential companion piece and a must see for all devotees of the band and post-punk. Corbijn's film, on the other hand, gives us a young man who could not reconcile his hasty marriage with a compulsion to scream out his dark phantoms from the stage.
The Dutchman's cinematography is bleak but beautiful, the end of the film, as expected, wrenching. And yet the last leap is more a relief, a kind of release, than an emotional gut punch. Curtis had an interior as grim as his surroundings, an internal landscape drained of fellow feeling by a fascination with the abomination, but the descent needs a counterpoint. Curtis had a laddishness too. When Curtis (Sam Riley) explains "Man City Blue" to his Belgian girlfriend Anik, there is a glimmer of the submerged Manc scally. The real Curtis supported a football team, drank pints, and engaged in elaborate pranks with his bandmates, all barely out of school (they were particularly fond of a turd holding challenge). The trajectory of "Control" doesn't allow for the contrast of British bluster and reserve. The film gives us only the latter, to the extreme, which in a way seems a cliche. The visual acuity of the film is undeniable, however. The marital meltdown is equally powerful for its authenticity, and Riley does a very good spastic chicken dance and pale-eyed gaze to the beyond: both trademarks of a seer too soon felled.
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