The ground breaking Joy Division was fronted by four guys from economically depressed Manchester (home of another seminal local band, the Buzzcocks). And as several of their contemporaries attest in the engrossing documentary Joy Division, the band articulated the sensations of the city. Written by music journalist Jon Savage, Joy Division conveys the singular importance of this influential post punk band and how well it expressed a sense of hopelessness but also the dark glamour of youthful dejection. Archival footage of Manchester testifies to its urban wasteland, while the haunting chords of Joy Division suggest a creative birth amidst the squalor.
"It was almost like a science fiction interpretation of Manchester," says a local observer of the band's rise. "You were always looking for beauty, because it was such an ugly place," echoes band member Bernard Sumner, interviewed alongside Peter Hook and Stephen Morris (who later reformed as New Order) about their Joy Division days before band mate Ian Curtis's suicide in 1980 at age 23 signaled its end.
Along with Anton Corbijn's gorgeously lensed fiction film about the band, Control, Grant Gee's, Joy Division made for a serendipitous 2007 companion piece. Both films appear on DVD this June from The Miriam Collection. While Corbijn's film profited from a mesmerizing performance by Sam Riley as charismatic, suicidal lead singer Curtis, Joy Division does Control one better by featuring electric performance footage of the undeniably captivating Curtis. Curtis's ice blue eyes and boyish looks were a startling rejoinder to his growling voice, herky-jerky, shamanistic contortions on British and French stages and Granada TV and the band's rise to attention.
Supplementing interviews with band members are the recollections of Joy Division manager Rob Gretton, Curtis's Belgian lover Annik Honore, Manchester music entrepreneur Tony Wilson (the subject of 24 Hour Party People) and fellow singer Genesis P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV), though Curtis's wife Deborah (on whose book, Control is based) is absent from the talking heads.
Joy Division details how a definitive 1976 Manchester performance by the quintessential punk band the Sex Pistols inspired the four Manchester lads to start their own band, taking their name from the rumored Nazi tag for camp brothels. Designer Peter Saville, who created the band's iconic 1978 first album cover with the pulsar wave mountain ranges, "Unknown Pleasures," says of the time he spent with the band, "I knew I had a part in a kind of life-changing experience."
As in Control, it is naturally Curtis's mercurial personality, sadly altered by epilepsy and the myriad drugs used to treat it, that ultimately takes center stage in Joy Division. Honore describes his performance style as that of a man "possessed by some very strong power," and Joy Division captures the electricity of that power expressed in performance. It is a testament to the power of Gee's film that the loss of that presence feels as significant today as it must have in 1980.
Joy Division. Directed by Grant Gee. 96 minutes. $22.95. www.geniusproducts.com For more information about Joy Division, visit Genius Products. To order Joy Division, go to TCM Shopping
by Felicia Feaster
