Cynical Cinema

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.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is a sequel to Elizabeth, which was a very good movie from 1998 that netted Cate Blanchett her first Oscar nomination. I suppose Oscar feels as though they ought to nominate her again, if her first performance in the same role was Academy-Award-worthy, then so too must this one be, right? Wrong. Not that Blanchett is bad. But last year, Helen Mirren was exquisite in her role as this very same queen, Elizabeth the First. And Mirren showed exactly what that role should be. She defined it. And one of the main reasons is - and much as I hate it when actresses do this - they uglied her up. If history tells us anything through pictures about Queen Elizabeth I, it is that she was fairly ugly. Mirren put on a fake nose and made herself look less attractive than she actually is. Charlize Theron did the same for Monster, and that was OK too. They were both playing real people. Real, ugly, people. Cate Blanchett is not ugly. She is, in fact, striking and beautiful. That this is historically inaccurate is insignificant. But if she were to look like Helen Mirren did, it would add a certain weight to the role that is just not present here.

Oh sure, she’s good. In fact, she’s great, and has been in every movie in which she has appeared in her illustrious career. But deserving of an Oscar nod she is not. Aside from the occasional mood swing and enraged outburst, little is required of Blanchett here except to have a pale face and appear queenly. The movie itself is not that good either. The first one was a breath of fresh air, it looked like something fairly new when I saw it back in the 90s. But now this sequel feels like just another period piece, like Becoming Jane which was also just released, and countless others. “Period piece” basically means people dress up in old-timey clothes and talk old-timey talk and do stuff that must have happened in old-timey times. Some are magnificent, Elizabeth: The Golden Age is not. There is of course, the prerequisite love story, this one between Blanchett and Clive Owen, who plays the famous adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh. Owen is decent in that role as well, bringing charm and old-timey manliness to the role, and Geoffrey Rush is terrific as always in his supporting role, that of Sir Francis Walsingham. But the whole movie feels a little forced.

And when it finally ends, and there is a bit of action, it feels tacked on, and too-little-too-late. The rest of the film had just plain bored me by then, and I didn’t care what happened to our heroes. Elizabeth: The Golden Age does what a period piece should do - have great costumes and convey the feel of that time period. But it does little else. And so does Cate Blanchett.

I have been attempting to watch as many Oscar-nominated movies as possible in the week leading up to the Big Event, but I have managed only to see those that are on DVD. And I have seen everything that is on DVD so far that is up for an award. Which means I have still missed out on dozens of films. I have seen all the Best Actor movies except for the likely winner, There Will Be Blood. I have seen only two of the Best Picture nominees, No Country For Old Men and Michael Clayton. In point of fact, the only categories where I have seen all five nominees are Sound Editing, where one of them is Transformers, and makeup, where one of them is Norbit. And I have seen only three of the Best Actress nominees. So far, I am rooting for Julie Christie to win Best Actress for Away From Her, simply because it’s slightly better than Marion Cotillard’s job in La Vie En Rose. But really, I am hoping for Anyone But Cate Blanchett This Year. She will certainly win others in her career, since she has that Meryl Streep thing going for her - she will be nominated for every movie she does for the rest of time - and she may well win Best Supporting for I’m Not There (another film that I regret to say I have yet to see), but she does not deserve it for this one. At least there’s a category for Costume Design. Oh, the prestige!

Speaking of costume design, and by extension period pieces, here is a brief list of the ten best period pieces ever made (and by brief, I mean ten items long):

10. The Piano (1993)
9. Raise The Red Lantern (1991)
8. Once Upon A Time in America (1984)
7. The Seventh Seal (1957)
6. Rashomon (1951)
5. The Duellists (1977)
4. Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World (2003)
3. Once Upon A Time In China (1991)
2. The Untouchables (1987)
1. The Seven Samurai (1954)

Hmm…two Robert DeNiro, two Harvey Keitel, two Toshiro Mifune. Maybe I need to diversify my taste some. But anyone who insists that Titanic should be on that list should be kicked in the leg.