Watched this last night and it has to be one of the more miserable two hours or so I've spent recently.

I never got into Joy Division and so can't comment on the accuracy. In any case, does this matter? I've never seen film of Ian Curtis' live performances - did he have that strange boxing-windmill style arm movement on stage? Dunno.

I've taken out the remastered CDs of the three albums and have just started to listen. The idea of watching the film was to find some kind of way in - or back in - to the music. Everyone knows 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and maybe that's a bit of an obstacle to what else was going on in the music.

As for the film ... I was reminded of The Beatles' 'Hard Day's Night' without the laughs. Or Reisz's 'Saturday Night Sunday Morning' with Sam Riley as a skinny Albert Finney. Much of the film seems to boil down to Cyril Connolly's dictum of the pram in the hallway as inimical to creative life. There's also a pretty clear connection made between Curtis' epilepsy and creativity (and eventual suicide). As so often, I wonder if it really is so straightforward. Ultimately, though, the film works (or doesn't) depending on how much the Ian Curtis persona fascinates you. For me, it doesn't. As portrayed in the film he seems mostly helpless and vacant - there's little to suggest the more interesting thoughts and conflicts which must have been going on to fuel the lyrics. There's a flatness to it all - ironically what I used to feel about the music. Listening to one or two tracks now I hear much greater richness in the music and possibilities in Curtis' voice.

Maybe it's another one of those cases where it's best to listen to the actual music and ignore the film.

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ontic fax

speaking destiny’s grope

 

tore me

 

as

    under the phenomenal Father

 

fuck you -

I’m putting the world up for adoption

 

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another 'derived' poem - only late last night I saw how it might have some kind of shadowy affinity with 'Control'.