Joy Division [2008]

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Audience Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Binding: DVD EAN: 5050582568318 Format: PAL Label: Universal Pictures UK Manufacturer: Universal Pictures UK Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Universal Pictures UK Region Code: 2 Release Date: 2008-08-25 Running Time: 96 Studio: Universal Pictures UK Theatrical Release Date: 2008
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Iconic Band Comment: "Joy Division" is a moderately interesting documentary about the legendary 1970's Manchester post-punk group. It features extensive interviews with group members, managers and writers as well as footage from Joy Division's various concerts and TV appearances.The film focuses mainly on the life of the late singer of the band Ian Curtis who of course tragically committed suicide on the eve of the group's planned tour of America. I must admit that I preferred the recent film about Joy Division, "Control" ,to this documentary and I felt that I found out more about Curtis and the band from that critically acclaimed movie rather than "Joy Division" the documentary. Customer Rating: Summary: Joy Division Comment: Another day, another Joy Division production..... The most influential produce timeless artefacts and this film can be said to contain many of the artefacts that Joy Division have left behind during their short existence. Yes the film contains regurgitated clips and pockets of information one might be familiar with, but Joy Division the film probably contains the first visual compilation of all the available clips of the band. The film is full of different parts: part post-punk, part post-industrial and part postmodernist in its analysis: The band were remnants of a punk age, the landscape is post industrial and the critique is postmodern. It seeks to understand post-punk with a new age. "Cosmic "is a term that is introduced into the vocabulary within the film as the music is being cited in terms of otherworldliness. Images and landscapes are utilised in a ghostly manner. Are these the ghosts of Ian Curtis? This metaphysic only perpetuates the existing mythologies further. A commentator cites Ian Curtis as being bipolar: A lad type to the North with the self-taught intellectual to the South. Curtis's reading list is impressive: Ballard, Sartre, Kafka and Nietzsche. I personally have an excuse as I was made to read these within the self indulgence of my university courses. This was Curtis's spare time! The film points out that Curtis's understanding of these literary heavyweights are factors in creating the uniqueness of his song writing and his presence that went with it. It is with this hindsight that the film can lead us to the conclusion that the death of Ian Curtis was somewhat inevitable. It is evident that Curtis was surrounded by death, despair and the demons that haunt us mortals. Death is never far away from any of us. Combine this with the cocktail of the worsening condition of his epilepsy and the authors who helped to refine his prose: Self destruction is one pragmatic response. In the film Tony Wilson acknowledges the lyrics as art and is aloof to the dangers that lurk within their context. But when they flash up on the film, they take on such a disturbing twist in the posthumous world of Joy Division. Much of the film is not about giving facts as such, but rather offers different perspectives on certain events that did or did not happens during the lifespan of the band. Furthermore it allows us to reflect on how one band came to produce one of the greatest albums by a British Group. This fact should not be lost among the complexities of this film and its sometimes deep subject matter. Does this film represent the last word on Joy Division? I doubt it..... Customer Rating: Summary: The last word on Joy Division? Comment: Less is more. The genius of this documentary is Jon Savage's interview technique. The 3 surviving Joy Division members talk with the interviewer like they were talking to a mate in the pub, in a totally unaffected manner. The end result is the most insightful piece on Ian Curtis to date and - surprise, surprise - he was just an ordinary guy. Slick production values (Peter Saville is a "consultant") give the video a pleasing Factory-ish feel. The copious extras (unused interview snippets from the various participants) are bitty but something that the avid fans will no doubt want to work their way through religiously. Curiosity value is added in the short contributions from Richard H. Kirk and Genesis P. Orridge (who looks more like Pete Burns than I remember). A well put together and well presented film from people who clearly understand what Joy Division were about. Customer Rating: Summary: True Faith Comment: 1 A moving documentary of one the greatest bands ever 2 A direct approach to the history of Joy Division 3 It will make you play the records again (loudly!) 4 Pity there was no Debbie Curtis & Alan Erasmus 5 See it, Buy it! Customer Rating: Summary: Definitive History Comment: This was the resistance : culture and art" - Malcolm Whitehead. The lens of time perverts memory. Now, right now, this very second, we are living in historic times. Across the world, right now, events are happening that will be chronicled in history. But us, we're too busy living, carrying on as normal, digging our way through the day to day toil, the oppression of food and housework and commuting. At some point in the future, we'll look back on these halycon days, these artifacts of what once was, and we'll rely on talking heads and memories and vague recollections to tell us what happened and how. The documentary is part of our history. Documentary makers are the modern historians. The book can tell us but a fraction of history. Only the people who were there really know. And even then, some of them probably don't know anymore. And so, "Joy Division". A straightforward recounting of a tiny fraction of history between 1977 and 18 May 1980, happening almost exclusively in one town, to mere but a handful of people. Grant Gee, helming his first major music film since 1997's forensic "Meeting People Is Easy", takes the lens away from the present to events that will, in one hundred years time, be recounted with the same historical gravitas as events of 1908. We will marvel, in 2108, the antiquated and primitive technology of film and projection and 24fps. Even now, events we can remember, our childhoods, our growing up, the rubble in the street, the weeks of snow, will be romanticised and turned into a world that never was. And even now, just twenty eight years after the death of Ian Curtis, many of the leading characters in that story - Martin Hannett, Alan Erasmus, Rob Gretton and Tony Wilson - are gone. In what will almost certainly be his epitah, Tony Wilson appears on screen talking with great flair, but the silent tragedy is that mere months later he too was gone. History is slipping through our fingers : made even six months later, one of this films central voices would be absent. Nonetheless, what is "Joy Division"? In one respect it's 93 minutes of talking heads and fragments of past film. In another way, it's a concise, almost breakneck - but thoroughly exhaustive - snapshot of a short 1,000 days. In that time, The Stiff Kittens became Warsaw became Joy Division, became a group, became artists, became two albums and five singles old, released a mere handful of songs, and disappeared. Joy Division became a legend then a memory. The tragedy of this is not just personal - who knows what creative limits Joy Division would have reached had they remained? Imagine if The Smiths legacy were confined to the end of the final notes of "Meat Is Murder". Imagine what great music we would never have heard. This is the tantalising and impossible mystery at the heart of Joy Division, the band. The main protagonists - the existant bandmates, the label boss, the friends of the time - recall with a fond humanity the brief hours. The late nights in small rooms in pubs and Universities across England and a brief excursion to Europe. Peter Hook offers a rambunctious joviality, Steven Morris a measured introspection, Bernard Sumner shows his often hidden private life. The rest of the cast - known and unknown - names such as Iain Grey, Terry Mason, Lesley Gilbert unknown to all but the most devoted of fans that devour the minutae - all offer equal and fair, thoroughly human commentary. Breaking a lifetime silence, Annik Honore offers what is, in all probability, her only public statements on the issue. At that age, 22,23, we are what we are, not quite men, but not boys, strange and occupying the middle ground between maturity and idealism, between morals and experience. More than once, they say quite how could we not have known? and, at the same time, with the benefit of hindsight what seems so obvious now was oblivious at the time, busy as everyone was with the simple act of staying alive. And let us not forget the compelling centre point of Joy Division, the thing that makes us remember all of this stuff, when it could so easily be forgotten : the music. The music is central to the film, and unreleased demo and live recordings populate the soundtrack as well as established `modern classics'. Excerpts of studio chatter and fragments of unheard versions appear at frequent intervals. Clearly, Grant Gee knows his stuff. Live performance is represented by excerpts from the short handful of existing Joy Division films and TV appearances (which, sadly do not appear in full on the inevitable DVD release). Without a doubt, "Joy Division" covers everything related to the life of the band, and many things you didn't know exist in an illuminating and important investigation. Aside from the music, the film delves into the aesthete of the art that underpinned the work, the influence of literature on the music, the impact of the visual art, and even colour photography of a band that almost exclusively existed solely in black and white. And then, as the tale reaches it's end, the slow revelation of tragedy unfolds with a mundane horror that leaves the viewer bereft with the impact that even now, three decades on, the untimely death of a young man would have on his friends. "Joy Division" is undoubtedly a labour of love, made by a filmmaker clearly at ease with, and competent with the craft, capable and respectful of the subject matter, neither trivialising nor overstating the events recounted within. Anyone with even a passing interest in Joy Division should start here and then go further inside the work. "Joy Division" is the essential counterpoint to "Control", a significant addition and illumination of established truths. If you like Joy Division, you must see this. More Reviews