Lead singer of Joy Division, the late Ian Curtis would have turned 52 this year – few can picture him as a middle-aged man, and he did not even have the chance for that. He has been dead for 28 years now, and his life, tragedy and suicide has been an issue for his loved ones and many fans ever since. Among his fans is Dutch photographer and video director Anton Corbijn, who, when met Curtis and his musicians at the beginning of their career, took a series of photographs of them for New Musical Express. It was Curtis who inspired Corbijn to shoot his first feature film. Let us state in advance that it was worth waiting for so long – for him and for us as well. Control is a moderately elaborated film, objective and moving at the same time – more than sufficient for a debut. It is a fair biographical film, in which music plays an important role – since the protagonist is a rock star. However, Corbijn treats the hypnotic, fascinating and – in its gloomy world – still drifting music in a reserved way (I would have given a bit more space to that). In contrast, what we get strikes us in the face. Sam Riley, who plays the part of Curtis, and his mates perfectly learned the songs, they play every groove, almost perfectly. By the way, Riley, the formerly unkown amateur actor, has now skyrocketed to stardom: he can evoke not only the legendary way Curtis used to move on stage, he is authentic and suggestive (if this word can be used for a basically melancholic character) beyond that, too. The Curtis story is a real negative career story, in which the medical history (his worsening epilepsy) and the turbulences in his private life (early marriage, after which he is unable to decide between his wife and lover) regularly block his blooming pop career. The ill-fated pop star with a dark charisma does not even need the traditional forms of self-destruction. It is not the commonplace rock and roll lifestyle that chases him towards the point of no return – right on the morning of the promising tour in the USA. The reasons are his mistreated disease, his distress and other mental illnesses, the private life traps and that all-pervading sorrow radiating from the film, the emblematic expression of which is the very music Joy Division played.
Corbijn places bare facts next to each other, the ones that are known to us already (from the biographical book by widow and co-producer Deborah), and he leaves the riddle to us to solve. Doubtless to say, the images are beautiful, and the method known from Corbijn`s  videos – the world exposed on colour film, and than turned into black and white – is not an allure. The subtle contrasts, the soft, sharp or simply bare images tell us the story better than any verbal narration could, this way creating a line that is parallel with the music and acting, and that is as strong as they are.