Just saw this. As mentioned by others, very good on atmosphere, a little short on insight (sorry!).
Riley is
uncannily like Curtis both in appearance and gesture (the rolling eyes while singing, spastic dancing etc.). There was very little delving into his personality or his relationship with Deborah, so we got this unsatisfactory picture of a couple of working class teenagers who kiss a few times, then he says "let's get married", then says "let's have a baby", then to Annik "the marriage was a mistake". Which would be fine if it was fictional impressionistic look at a relationship where you can fill in the blanks yourself, but when you've read Deborah's book and know the story already, and know she was executive producer, it was a little thin.
With the band forming you get an overly neat sequence - Sumner & Hook telling Curtis they need a singer, followed by the famous local Sex Pistols gig, followed by Curtis joining the band, swiftly followed by Rob Gretton taking them on as manager ("Hallelujah, I am a believer in Joy Division") - it's all a bit (urgh) Commitments. Rob-as-comic-relief and other scenes (e.g. teenage Curtis steals some drugs and reads "side-effects include nausea, blurred vision, giddiness and fatigue" - comic pause - "I'm taking two!" - ha fookin ha) are also heavy-handedly corny.
"Atmosphere" welling up when Deborah finds Ian's body at the end was maybe a little exploitative, but that was nothing compared to the TERRIBLE decision to give the last word, music-wise, to the
K*ll*rs doing an atrocious version of Shadowplay over the closing credits
I could only stare in disbelief as the crowds all left. At least Corbijn didn't get his mates U2 in to murder Love Will Tear Us Apart or something. New Order's In A Lonely Place would've been a blindingly obvious but apt choice here.
And too little investigation into Curtis' lyrical fascination with history, WWII, religion, Ballard etc. or his long fascination with dying young which, whatever about buying into the martyr myth, at least complicates the "(epilepsy & bad drugs) + (marriage problems & affair) = suicide" equation, of the general social and political climate of the time, of Martin Hannet's experimental production techniques (which Sumner and Hook hated at first, but Ian loved). It also falls between two stools of the Ian/Deborah/Annik relationships and the band's progress, with the result that you don't get quite enough of either.
But as others said above, it's beautiful to look at as you would expect from photographer Corbijn (and highly reminiscent of films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning or Billy Liar); the period detail is meticulous, Riley and Morton and the cast are great; and it's genuinely unnerving to see them all actually playing the songs (albeit a little timidly - the actors unsurprisingly lack the bludgeoning raw power of JD live, if not the occasional cack-handedness!).
