Sure it's been out for a while, but Anton Corbijn's Ian Curtis biopic Control is still screening. Bwog correspondent Jamies Johns reviews the film and philosophizes on the nature of the rockumentary.

Most of us know the story by now: Ian Curtis, lead singer of post-punk outfit Joy Division, hung himself at the age of 23, leaving behind a wife, a young daughter and a handful of impeccable recordings. Curtis' mystique and tragic death have almost begun to overshadow the music of his band and Control, a film about Curtis made by famed video director Anton Corbijn, will probably only serve to further the cult of Ian Curtis.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, because Corbijn's portrait of Curtis is the only one I have seen that looks fairly at Curtis' life with a true appreciation for him and the music he produced without reverting to idol worship. The film is one of the best rock bios I have seen; it is not only beautiful, thanks to Corbijn's use of black and white photography, but it also feels, for lack of a better word, real. Although Curtis would later become an icon, for most of his life he was an average guy. The characters in Control are not distant figures that lived in the 1970s and with whom we can feel no connection. Instead, the deft performances by Sam Riley as Curtis and Samantha Morton as Deborah Curtis, his wife, make Control emotionally devastating. We feel the tender moments between Curtis and his wife and his mistress, Annik Honore, and we also equally feel the suffocation Curtis felt towards the end of his life.