Joy Division

Director:  Grant Gee
Year Released:  2007
Rating:  2.5

Aesthetically pleasing documentary covering the doomed band Joy Division - and their ties to the city of Manchester - according to the surviving members of the band, Tony Wilson, comrades (Genesis P-Orridge makes an appearance!) and people in-the-know. Gee, known for his seizure-friendly Radiohead doc Meeting People is Easy, has a crisp visual sense, though this film is hardly critical of Curtis - just another exercise in worship - and doesn't present much information different than Winterbottom's excellent 24 Hour Party People (the same can be said of Corbijn's Control). If Curtis' curse was an obsession with death and suffering, so it's Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris' curse to spend their remaining days talking about - and reliving - the brief life of Curtis, and I get the sense that all these years have started to warp their memories (Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic: this is what you have to look forward to). The music holds up, too - one listen to either Closer or Unknown Pleasures reminds you their music is hopeless as it's ever been: to paraphrase one interviewee, if punk rock was all about "fuck you," Curtis et. al. were all about "we're fucked." You get the spirit, but then you lose the feeling.

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