These are the first words ("Heart and Soul" from the album 'Closer') of Anton Corbijn's excellent movie about Ian Curtis, the frontman of the legendary band called Joy Division. And these words will be the key for the whole (life-)story too...
It is possible if Corbijn's name is already familiar to you. For me the Dutch was the most luckiest photographer ever. I remember I learned his 'strange' name as a teenager when I was reading music magazines like Metal Hammer as a Bible, and decided to be a photograph myself (actually I became). After Jonathan Glazer's and Spike Jonze's cinematic debut I was waiting for his unavoidable film the most. When I heard that he is working on a book of Ian Curtis' widow, I knew it's gonna be something real authentic.
"We're Joy Division. You're the crowd."
I was getting familiar the band relatively late. One of my friends gave me an LP (!) around the end of the nineties, and the unique sound didn't let me leave anymore. I'm not a music critic so my explanation might be rather funny: 'my' Joy Division contains a weak but raw guitar sound, a merciless bass, and a drum which sounds like hit on a pillow. And almost forgot: the whole thing is closed in a can:). Maybe Corbijn's pictorial definition is more accurate: he gave in his movie a mixture of Bowie, Iggy Pop and The Exploited. I suppose he has right with these impressions.
I don't know and actually don't care how real is the story or how faithful is Sam Riley's act in the role of Curtis. I know one thing: his performance is brilliant. His face is the saddest I've ever seen on the canvas. The R.E.M. clown Michael Stipe's arm-gestures are a joke next to his powerful marching-lurching stage presence. We'll see him again very soon I guess...
Some line earlier I said the word 'authentic'. Corbijn just continues the British 'free cinema' where Reisz, Richardson or Anderson left it some decades earlier. He found even a "new Malcolm McDowell" too:) Just compare with the JD's guitarrist from the film (James Anthony Pearson).
Ok, with my enthusiasm I could continue until the morning. Instead of that take my advice: go back in time to the early seventies to the grey English town, Macclesfield, turn the volume to the max, and sit front of your screen. Closer...
10/10
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