Cynical Cinema

“The paintings…reflect the cleansing terror to which the Holy Inquisition aspires in God’s name”

Perhaps nothing in human history has ever compared to the Spanish Inquisition when it comes to doing evil in the name of God.  As the Cardinal says in Goya, the church acknowledged the fact that they are trying to inspire terror in the people.  They figure the only way to convert people to Christianity and make sure that all of Spain is Christian is to scare people so much that they will never utter a word that is not Christian in nature, and thereby eventually come to believe what they are saying.  Well, they got the terror part right, that’s for sure.

Goya is as much a  film about the Spanish Inquisition as it is a movie about the famous Spanish painter Francisco Jose De Goya.  His story mirrored that of the Inquisition, and he became a player in the bizarrely political world that surrounded that most heinous of historic periods.  He remains one of the most famous painters in history, and this film deals with his painting in juxtaposition with that particular historic period.

Goya opens with a religious procession, one which creepily involves self-flagellation.  You remberm that creepy albino guy in The DaVinci Code who whipped himself?  Frankly, I hope you don’t.  I hope no one saw that movie, because it sucked.  Watch Goya instead, it doesn’t suck.  In many circles, it is considered a classic, and I wholeheartedly agree.  This movie is epic in scope, in design, and in vision.  The costumes in that opening scene are remarkable.  The colours are vivid and magnificent, which is fitting for a movie about painting.  And Donatas Banionis’ performance as the painter Goya is staggering.

Even from the beginning of the movie, Goya is clearly eccentric.  He paints all night when he is inspired, churning out one, and sometimes two or three, paintings by morning.  He paints with a candle stuck to his top-hat, wax dripping down into his face, to light his canvas.  He is prone to spells of deafness and other spells of out-of-control rage.  He is constantly fighting with his student, and their relationship is an odd one.  They are constantly engaging in screaming matches, with Goya deriding the younger man’s technique and the younger man mocking Goya’s subject matter.  But then an hour later they seem to have forgotten about it, and although they are constantly at each others’ throats, they appear to genuinely love and respect each other.

Goya’s biggest failing appears to be his lust for women.  He is constantly cheating on his wife, and chasing after the pretty girls who are all around.  Chief among these women is the Duchess of Alba, an absolutely gorgeous woman who is clearly, right from the beginning, a sort of femme fatale.  We can tell right away she will contribute to his downfall, as he is such a passionate and hotheaded man that she can lead him wherever she likes simply by being beguiling and sexy.  She knows it, and she plays him like a fiddle for a long, long time.

While Goya is chasing after women and painting stuff for the royal family as the court painter in Spain, the Spanish Inquisition is gathering steam.  We see a particular session of the Inquisition, where four people are brought up on “trial”, and forced to recant their statements.  One guy, who said he didn’t believe that saints could cure all disease gets off easy - four years as a slave.  One woman refuses to recant.  She is charged with singing songs that are “against God”.  These are traditional Spanish songs, as she puts it “the songs of our mothers”.  She is put to death.

This is the first time Goya and the Inquisition intersect.  Having seen this madness with his own eyes, he starts to feel that he must paint it.  And he does.  He paints the scenes of the Inquisition, the terror of the common people,  the evil in the eyes of the Inquisitors.  Everyone around him is desperate for him to destroy, or at least hide, these paintings, because if the Inquisition sees them he will surely be killed.  But Goya will not listen and he won’t hide them.  In fact, he displays them.  And gets called in front of the Inquisition.

What follows is, in my opinion, one of the great scenes in movie history.  He is not being summoned for punishment, or for questioning, but rather to receive congratulations.  The Inquisitor is pleased with his pictures.  He is glad that the Inquisition is inspiring such fear.  Not only that, but he is deluded enough to see what he wants to see in the paintings, while believing that they serve a greater purpose.  Because these paintings, to those who understand art, are blatantly anti-Inquisition.  But subtle and clever enough that the very people he is skewering are the ones thanking him for doing it. 

There is a similar scene a little later on. Goya begins to get bolder, and does this very same thing to the Royal Family, right to their faces.  He paints them exactly as he sees them - petty, ridiculous, and corrupt.  But they love the painting, and reward him for it.  After a while, this adulation is what starts, I believe, to drive him over the edge.  He makes numerous references in the second half of the movie to Don Quixote, and he clearly understands that he is going a bit crazy, and even understands a bit of the nature of that insanity.  It seems to come from this amazing ability to mock people and yet have them alap him on the back.

And then he goes all out.  You don’t get it when I make fun of you subtly, in painting?  He seems to be saying.  Well, how about if I make it as blatant as possible.  This is the difference between Neil Young performing Let’s Impeach The President on the Colbert Report, and Neil Young stepping on George Bush’s neck and spray-painting “Impreachment” on his face.  And this move gets results.  And action.

You’ll have to see it to find out.  I will give no more away, because I think everyone should watch this movie.  Goya deals with not only one of the most interesting men to ever live, but also one of the most terrifying, brutal times and places to be alive in all of human history.  Goya is a must-watch.  It comes out November 25th, from First Run Features.

I have one complaint with Pete Seeger:  The Power of Song, and I’m going to get it off my chest first.  Pete Seeger is a folk singer who is mostly forgotten today.  You might remember Bruce Springsteen’s recent album, The Seeger Sessions.  Springsteen is a huge Seeger fan and appears in this documentary.  So too does Bob Dylan.  And here’s what bugs me.  One of the biggest stories in Pete Seeger lore involves Bob Dylan.  At the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Bob Dylan went electric, creating a massive controversy.  According to legend, Pete Seeger was so incensed when Dylan plugged in his electric guitar that he stalked the backstage area with an axe, looking to chop through the power cables running his amp.  He apparently had to be physically restrained.  But Bob Dylan appears in this documentary, and there is no mention of this event!  None!  This is one, as a Dylan fanatic, I really wanted to hear about.

But, that really is my only complaint.  There are other Pete Seeger stories, legendary stories, that are explored in full detail in this film.  Like the story about the Vietnam veteran who showed up at one of Seeger’s concerts with the intent to murder him, but after hearing Seeger’s songs and understanding them for the first time, he broke down, didn’t go through with his plan, and told Seeger that his life had been changed.  And that was the kind of man and the kind of artist Seeger was.  This documentary traces his activism and music through his early days, through his pop star days, all the way up to the present day where he still lives with his wife of what must be sixty years at least, and continues his activism even in his 80s.  It’s an incredible portrait of an American patriot, a patriot every bit as great as Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau.

There are some impressive interview appearances from the likes of Dylan and Springsteen, as well as Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks, Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt and Arlo Guthrie.  And some of Seeger’s great songs are featured as well - “Stickin’ To The Union”, “If I Had a Hammer”, “We Shall Overcome”, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”, and “Big Muddy”.  There is footage from Seeger’s appearance in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he refused to testify and faced jail time.  His activism is traced right up to the present day, and another impressive moment is when he built a boat and lobbied (successfully) to clean up the Hudson River.

This is the best DVD out this week, from Alliance Films.  Check it out.

3 comes out today, July 29th, from Alliance Films. It is not to be confused with the movie Thr3e, which was a really crappy horror film involving the number three that was released last year. No, the 3 that comes out today is a made-for-TV movie from ESPN, telling the story of Dale Earnhardt, one of the most revered drivers in the history of NASCAR. Barry Pepper stars as Earnhardt, a man who was (pardon the pun) driven to be the best. He does an excellent job in what proves to be a fairly tough role. The movie tracks Earnhardt’s rise through the world of NASCAR to become the best driver alive, and goes up to the point where he is…no longer alive. And I must say, the handling of his death in this film is done in a very touching and simple, wonderful way.

In some ways, however, the movie does seem to sugar-coat much of Earnhardt’s personality. The DVD comes jammed with special features, including a second disc with more extras than one could imagine. Race footage, interviews, and all kinds of specials on the man. And judging from those interviews and specials, he was a little bit more of a maniac, and probably a lot more mean and dangerous, than this movie makes him appear. And although I enjoyed the film simply because it’s well done and Earnhardt is an interesting character, I found a lot more value in the special features. 3 is worthwhile for both NASCAR fans and casual observers alike.

ESPN has a series called SportsCentury, that focuses on the greatest games, coaches, teams and athletes in history. The program ended in August of 2006, and featured some of the greatest who ever played any game. And while most of these programs revolved around baseball, football, basketball and Olympic athletes, a few dealt with auto racing. In SportsCentury’s countdown of the top 100 athletes in history, there were three auto racers - A.J. Foyt, Richard Petty, and Mario Andretti. On the program, there were far more. And today, July 29th, ESPN is releasing a substantial number of NASCAR-themed DVDs through Alliance Films.

One of those DVDs is SportsCentury Greatest Athletes: Dale Earnhardt. Perhaps the most revered driver in NASCAR history, who died tragically at Daytona in 2001. And while the 45-minute program is interesting, and informative, it’s fairly pointless. The reason for that is that the same day Alliance Films and ESPN are releasing 3: The Dale Earnhardt Story on DVD as well. It’s a made-for-TV biopic of Earnhardt, and it comes with a second disc jammed with special features. Earnhardt’s races. Interviews with the man. A documentary about his life. And of course the feature film itself. The SportsCentury DVD is interesting, but all that information and much, much more is available on 3. I would pick that one up instead.

I like Dale Earnhardt Jr. He’s a charming and interesting guy, seems really friendly and smart, and he’s certainly a good NASCAR driver. But that being said, I am a little confused about his inclusion in the ESPN SportsCentury Greatest Athletes collection. The Earnhardt Jr. SportsCentury comes out on DVD today, July 29th, from Alliance Films. The same day, another SportsCentury about Earnhardt senior comes out. That one I get. Another one is being released, about Jeff Gordon. I get that one as well. And the other big NASCAR release is 3: The Dale Earnhardt Story, which is an ESPN made-for-TV movie starring Barry Pepper as Earnhardt senior, and jammed with bonus features. I get this too.

But SportsCentury is all about the greatest athletes in history. And setting aside the debates about whether race-car drivers are “athletes”, or NASCAR vs. Formula One, and all that business, I’m still confused. SportsCentury has, understandably, profiled Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, Jim Thorpe, Jim Brown, Jesse Owens, Babe Didrikson, Martina Navratilova, Jerry Rice. All of this I get. I even understand putting Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Jeff Gordon in this company. But Earnhardt Jr.? This year, Earnhardt Jr. is sitting in second in the points standings for Hendrick Motorsports. (I did some wikipedia research.) But this SportsCentury Greatest Athletes profile came out in 2006. (In fact, it was the last ESPN SportsCentury program that aired.)

By 2006, Earnhardy Jr. had one third place finish on the season and one fifth place. The other years, he had finished 48th, 11th, 16th, 8th, and 19th. So…how does he qualify as one of the “Greatest Athletes” ever? Even the DVD itself doesn’t seem able to answer that. The entire show seems concerned with showing that Earnhardt Jr. could well become an amazing driver. And of course, much of the program talks about his father. So…is that how he got profiled? Because his dad was that big and famous? Or because they had already profiled so many sports figures that they ran out of really great ones? Is that why the show was taken off the air? I wish this DVD would answer at least one of these questions, but it doesn’t.

The most impressive thing about ESPN’s DVD Jeff Gordon: Inside Access is the sheer volume of information and programming contained in it. More than four hours worth of footage of Gordon, from races to interviews to features to profiles. It features childhood footage of Gordon racing. Six other races, condensed for time. All kinds of NASCAR highlights. All kinds of ESPN features, including “Go-Karting With Kenny Mayne”. ESPN specials, including “Up Close with Chris Meyers” and “Mohr Sports with Jay Mohr” (the best of the programs). One-on-one interviews withe Gordon and the gorgeous Melissa Stark, Mike Tirico, and others. Then the little throwaway stuff, like “Jeff Gordon at the X-Games”, and “Make-A-Wish with Jeff Gordon”.

Basically, ESPN has thrown everything they have ever had on Jeff Gordon into one DVD, and released it through Alliance Films today, July 29th, for all the rabid NASCAR and Jeff Gordon fans. There is truly too much information to handle on this DVD all at once, and not being a NASCAR fan or a Jeff Gordon freak, I had no idea where to begin. I started with the SportsCentury profile, since I had already watched a couple of those on Dale Earnhardt and Earnhardt Jr. And I moved on through the specials and finished with the actual race footage. I recommend you do the same. But only if you’re into NASCAR. This one’s for fans only.

Hustle is a 2004 movie from ESPN and Alliance Films, all about the troubled life of Pete Rose. It comes out on DVD today, July 22nd, and it begins after his retirement as a baseball player, in 1987 when he was the manager of the Cincinnatti Reds. I assume we all know the Pete Rose story, but here it is in a nutshell anyway: Rose is still the all-time hits leader in baseball history, a man who knew nothing but baseball. In 1988 he was banned for life from baseball by commissioner Bart Giamatti for gambling. As the manager of the Reds, he was betting on baseball, (including some bets on his own team). Tom Sizemore plays Rose, and one can only imagine he brings many of his personal demons to the role. And I found his performance alternately brilliant and irritating. At times, he really seems to embody Rose as he was at his most charming and reckless (he really does look like him), and at other times, I couldn’t shake the image of John Turturro. Somehow, he really reminded me of John Turturro. But that’s likely my own problem. The movie opens with Springsteen singing Glory Days, which is a promising beginning.

Hustle is directed by Peter Bogdanovich, the man behind such classics as The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon. Bogdanovich shows a sure hand here, but he isn’t given much to work with. I have always felt that the way Rose played the game was an incredibly important part of his story. That on the field, he had no off switch, and that made him an all-time great. But off the field, that lack of an off switch made him something of a menace, to himself and others. The moment when, in the 1970 all-star game, he ran over Ray Fosse, a catcher for the Cleveland Indians, separating his shoulder. Fosse was never really the same after that.

And at the time, this moment became famous in baseball. Look how much Pete Rose wants to win! Even in a meaningless All-Star game he’s willing to get dirty! Well…OK. But suppose, for a moment, that Scott Stevens had laid out say, Ron Francis at centre ice during an NHL All-Star contest, ruining his career. Would anyone celebrate this? Or would they call him a maniac? No one throws at batters in an All-Star game. No one slides hard into second or runs over a catcher. It’s a meaningless exhibition. This was perhaps more an indication of a sociopathic personality than it was an example of hard-nosed baseball.

And the Fosse incident is dealt with in Hustle, early on in a throw-away moment. “Oh, isn’t that Ray Fosse? He was never the same, eh?” And that’s it. So although the details of the Pete Rose baseball playing career are glossed over, his gambling habits are put under a microscope. The whole movie deals with just two years - from 1987 when Rose met Paul Janszen, the man who would become his assistant and later bring him down. And really, Paul is the star of the movie, as he goes from wide-eyed hero-worshipper to a disillusioned, badly used former friend of Rose who turns him in partly because he has no choice, and partly because he has been victimized by the man.

And that’s fine, Paul is played quite well by Dash Mihok, but this really is a movie about Pete Rose, right? Well, why not spend the time learning about Rose and how he got to be the way he is, instead of focusing on the other guy? Why not start during his playing career, at least a bit? Rose comes off at first as a guy who just wants everyone to like him, but slowly it becomes clear that he is just using these people who consider him their friend. And that’s all we really learn about him throughout the whole film. Which makes the whole picture feel very long.

The baseball scenes are few and far between, and really don’t look realistic at all. The supporting cast is decent, but Melissa DiMarco as Rose’s wife Carol doesn’t really seem to know how she feels about her husband at all. Sarain Boylan, as Paul’s wife, is pretty easily placated. And the people playing Marge Schott and Bart Giamatti and Fay Vincent all look quite a lot like the people they are playing, but that is where this story really is. In the back rooms of baseball. And these characters are terribly underused. This movie is really not good enough for the story it tells.

But wait! There is a reason to pick up this DVD! It is the special features. Bart Giamatti’s press conference in 1988, where he banned Pete Rose from baseball for life, has an eerie ring in the context of baseball today. His line “the integrity of the game of baseball must be defended by a process which, itself, lives up to the same standards of integrity” (I paraphrase because I can’t remember it word-for-word) is really striking when looked at through the lens of the steroid scandal. The interviews with Rose are incredible to watch as well - the Primetime interview where he finally admits to betting on baseball in 2004. A Sportscentury interview with John Dowd. There is even an interview with Paul Janszen on ESPN. But what’s saddest about these special features is that they give more of a window into Pete Rose than does the movie. The movie is a miss, but the special features are magnificent.

Romulus, My Father comes out tomorrow, July 8th, from Alliance Films. It’s the story of a young boy and his father and his mother, and it isn’t exactly heartwarming. But it is pretty good. Romulus is played by Eric Bana (Munich), who gives a good performance as the father of a young boy. His son is played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, who also gives a good performance, as does his mother, played by the gorgeous Franke Potente (The Bourne Identity). The performances are great, the cinematography is great, and the story is interesting. But for all that, this movie is awfully ponderous. There is very little humour, and very few light moments to take some of the weight off.

Romulus is having trouble keeping his depressive wife by his side. Potente is having sex with different men, including Bana’s best friend, which of course puts a serious burden on both her husband and son. The young boy struggles to understand his situation, but as he gets shuffled from one life to another to another, he has trouble keeping it together. So you’ve got a depressed, sex-addicted mother, and a depressed, full-of-rage father, struggling to raise a young boy. Which is depressing for all of us. The young boy is the lone bright spot in the movie, with his ability to remain amazingly happy given the circumstances. But it isn’t enough to lift the movie above it’s slow, deliberate pacing and crushingly bleak outlook.

With all this emotional baggage carried around by the main characters, it would be good if we, the audience, had some emotional investment in the film. That way, we could identify, at the very least, with the young boy. But the slow pacing prevents us from making that connection. And so at the end of the film, we have no idea, really, what we are supposed to take away from the movie. This is the true story of the childhood of Raymond Gaita, who grew up to be a successful author. Is that what we’re supposed to take from this? That young Raymond grew up to make a success of himself? Was it because of this chaos? Despite it? We have no idea. The drama in the film is too inert for us to spot any real defining moments in the young boy’s life.

It’s too bad, really. Great acting, great camera work, a true story - it all adds up to one boring, puzzling movie.

Persepolis is the story of a young girl named Marjane growing up in Iran, under the regime of the Shah.  She is precocious, cute, and to a degree bilssfully unaware of the repression that surrounds her.  Her family is a fairly forward-thinking one, with strict ideas of honour and morals, but not one of those crazy-religious repressive families that have become the stereotype.  Her mother is a free-thinker and a stong, independant woman, as is her grandmother.  Her father and his brothers are tough-minded, and willing to take their beliefs to the limit.  When the war with Iraq begins, however, and the Islamic revolution takes over, Marjane’s world view is drastically altered.

 An outspoken girl, there are some scenes which resonate powerfully.  There is one where she speaks out in her university about the new rules that are all of a sudden penetrating into higher education.  If girls can’t wear makeup, because it might arouse the boys, why can’t they wear baggy pants either?  Baggy pants are the fashion right now, and they hide the female form, whereas tight pants show it off.  So is mandating tight pants a decision that was made based on the proper way for girls to behave, or is it because they are against fashion in principle?  A simple, yet powerful scene in a movie that is absolutely crammed with simple and powerful scenes.

The cartoon is almost entirely in black-and-white, which is terrific.  It creates a sort of oppressive atmosphere in a place and time where oppression is the order of the day.  As Marjane grows into womanhood, and starts to question the world around her more and more, she starts to listen to music.  Music that has been banned by the government - it starts with ABBA.  Then ABBA sucks, you gotta hear the Bee Gees.  Eventually this grows into a love for Iron Maiden, perhaps informed more by a form of conscious rebellion at the oppressive society than by an actual love for heavy metal.

Marjane moves to Europe to escape the Iranian craziness, and quickly finds that the nuns she lives with there are, in their own way, as repressive as the Iranians.  A real fish out of water in Europe, she finds that it is tougher to be a stranger in a free land she doesn’t know than it is to live in oppressed land that she does.  Upon her return to Iran, she reconnects with her family, especially her grandmother, who imparts many wise life lessons, and enables Marjane to define herself in terms of her heritage and sociocultural identity. 

Since the whole movie is told through the eyes of this young girl, and then the young woman, hers is the only perspective we see, and it is fairly bleak.  Her perspective, in turn, is informed only by her own personal history, and the cultural and religious background of her upbringing.  Through war, turmoil, executions and horrible oppression, we get two stories, both of them harsh, but both of them fantastic.  The one of the horrors visited upon Iran by the Islamic revolution, and one of a young girl trying desperately to find her place in the world - her world and also a foreign world. 

Something I feel I should add - she has a few experiences with men throughout the film, and I felt, in watching it, that the end could be irritating.  Like, one of those endings where if she just finds the right man, everything will be OK.  And thankfully, the movie does not go down this obnoxious path.  It remains as constant in it’s themes and purpose as Marjane would herself hope to be.  Persepolis is based on the autobiographical graphic novel written by Marjane Satrapi, and she collaborated on the screenplay as well.  She shows herself to be a very courageous woman, laying her sould completely bare, warts and all, up on the screen to tell a story.  A wonderful, smart, funny, poignant and powerful story.  Rent this movie.

When I first told our music director that Alliance Films was going to send my a copy of Control to review for June 17th, I asked him if he would play a Joy Division song after this review, so that I could perhaps expand the minds of our classic rock listeners to a new kind of more obscure, but equally classic, rock music. His exact words were “there’s no way I’m putting that namby-pamby British sad-sack crap on CHEZ”. OK, maybe those weren’t his exact words, but he certainly said something along those lines. And this is the attitude many people have about this era of British music. The Smiths, The Buzzcocks, the Jam…they seem to make the bile rise in the throats of many hardcore rock afficionados, the way emo does today. But for the life of me, I can’t understand how anyone would love Nirvana and hate Joy Division. Or how they can talk at length about the merits of R.E.M. and down on The Jam.

But I think those people are in the minority, since Joy Division has become, since the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis, recognized the world over as one of the most influential and one of the greatest bands of the late 70s and early 80s. And it is Ian Curtis who is the focal point of Control, the biopic by music video director Anton Corbijn. This is Corbijn’s first effort at a feature film, and it is terrific. It was Corbijn who, as a photographer, took the iconic photo of Joy Division that has become the definitive portrait of the band in the years since the death of Curtis. He has a real sense of history, shooting much of the movie in the real locations. Sam Riley stars as the singer, and he walks out of the house in which the real Curtis lived, down the street to the real building where Curtis worked. Corbijn has an incredibly astute visual sense, and the streets of Manchester are as important to the story as is the band itself.

Riley gives what truly is a star turn in the film. While it appears he was chosen for the role primarily because of his uncanny resemblance to the real Ian Curtis, he becomes so much more than that. Riley was not really an actor before landing the role in this film, be was a singer. And it really is him singing the songs on stage with Joy Division. The actors playing the rest of the band are really playing the songs. Riley has managed to mimic Curtis’ actual stage movements so precisely and so convincingly that on occasion I leaned in closer to the screen, certain that I was seeing file footage of Joy Division in 1979, and not Riley in a movie in 2007. Also wonderful are Samantha Morton and Alexandra Maria Lara as his wife and girlfriend respectively, the two women who (unintentionally, it would seem) tore his world apart. In fact, I think the very best thing about this film is the casting. This movie is perfectly cast all around.

Not only is Manchester a star of the movie, so too is the music of Joy Division, music which just gets better with every subsequent listen. As the movie goes on, the music itself tells a bit more of the story than we’re getting otherwise. And that’s because Ian Curtis was a man who lived through his music, who expressed himself in song and poetry and lyrics far better than he could in the real world, with words and conversation. (I have one bone to pick here though - “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, the definitive Joy Division song, appears too early. It’s a song about the conflict raging inside Curtis concerning the two women he loved, and the song appears in the movie before we really see that conflict appear. But it’s a small bone to pick.)

In many ways, Control is the best musical biopic of the last few years. Corbijn recognizes that it is impossible to tell the story of an entire life in just two hours without leaving some huge gaps. So he chooses to tell the story from the time Joy Division began through Ian Curtis being diagnosed with epilepsy, through his fits and his depression and his ups and downs, and finally through to his tragic suicide. There are still, of course, some giant gaps, but the streamlining of the biography helps Control avoid the bloated feel of movies like Ray and Walk The Line. And the fact that the music itself tells so much of the story is, I think, a luxury unique to this particular subject and this particular man. Very few singers in history have written such open, bare and honest songs about themselves, without being cryptic. Ian Curtis was not cryptic, he was not artsy for art’s sake, he was crying out for help through his music. Control is the story of the help that never came.