NYFF Interview: Anton Corbijn

Coming from the Netherlands to northern England in the late seventies was a big move for Anton Corbijn. The highly-organized social system in the Netherlands was a stark contrast to England’s the bleak, grungy cities full of poverty. He quickly gained work as a photographer shooting bands and concerts. The pictures that he took of Joy Division’s lead singer, Ian Curtis, sustain a haunting position in rock history as there are iconic of Curtis, and among some of the only professional pictures of the band. 

Over the next twenty years Corbijn has continued photographing bands and moved into music videos, starting out with Joy Division’s apocalyptic Atmosphere. Thus, it’s fitting that he should direct a biopic of Ian Curtis. Control is an intimate look Curtis’s life and relationships.  More sentimental than Michael Winterbottem’s recent 24 Hour Party People (which covered many of the same individuals), the film provides an intimate glimpse at a tragic figure. 

Control has been well-received on the festival circuit and opens in limited theatres today. The film stars the unknown Sam Riley as Curtis against Samantha Morton’s Debbie, on whose novel the film is based.  I caught up with Corbijn in New York. 

Q: Can you tell us the reactions concerning the individuals portrayed in the film?
AC:  Everybody was involved to some degree; Debbie Curtis was, of course, involved because it was her book. But this film is about Ian Curtis and his story while Debbie’s book was her story. I made that distinction clear to her and told her we’d talking to Annik Honoré, the journalist Ian had an affair with, because she was an important part of his life. The script was shown to New Order in November last year and I went to talk with them about their reactions. To my surprise, they all liked it which was great because they usually argue about everything. They even agreed to score the film.  Debbie and Annik have both seen it and they’re both ok with it, I don’t think they’re ecstatic, emotions are still very raw. But they’re both okay with it and that’s good enough for me.

Q:  Did New Order have any criticism at all?
AC: Not really, I think Bernard Sumner said he wasn’t smoking at the time, but not much else.  They all feel it’s accurate.

Q: Why is Joy Division a significant band?
AC: This film is not about Joy Division, it’s about Ian Curtis. There is an element to the film that deal’s with Joy Division because Ian Curtis was their lead singer.  But if I were to make a film about Joy Division, it would be a very different film. We follow this boy from 17-23 and see how fame doesn’t work out for him. A lot of young people seem to know about Joy Division. I don’t know how they discovered it. Probably because a lot of young bands like Arcade Fire, The Killers, Interpol, Editors all name check Joy Division as an influence. Young people follow that up and buy the records.  In fact, I see a lot of young people with Joy Division t-shirts. 

Q: You went to great lengths to get facts accurate in this film, why a narrative as opposed to documentary?
AC: I didn’t want to make a documentary; I wanted to make a real film. In the late seventies, in England, very little of normal life was documented.  It’s not like celebrity life these days where everything is documented the moment they leave the door.  Thus, there’s not much archival footage of Ian Curtis.  In fact there are only a few badly filmed TV and concert appearances and a handful of photographs.  So if you wanted to make a documentary about him, it would be very difficult. 

Q: You were present during Joy Division’s early years, so does this film feel very nostalgic?
AC: My memory is not that great, so I look back at that time through my photographs. It was late in 1979 when I heard Joy Division when I was planning to move to England. I was hired by a small company and asked to photograph the band. Those pictures, which have since become famous, suggest I had a deep relationship with the band which isn’t true.  They were done in ten minutes. I never spent a lot of time talking with them. I remember coming to England from the Netherlands and seeing intense poverty for the first time. I recall it being very bleak and gray, which prompted the decision to shoot this in black and white. I don’t think there is a picture of Joy Division in color.

Q: Where did you shoot this?               
AC: Some of it was shot in Macclesfield, the rest in Nottingham.  Manchester was out because they’ve destroyed what once there and rebuilt. It looks nothing like it did in the seventies. In England, we have the east-midlands and the west-midlands which have different film regulations.  We shot in the East-midlands substituting Liverpool for Manchester. In Macclesfield, we shot in the house where he lived because very little has changed from the seventies, save for a few doors and windows. There’s this scene in the film where he goes out the front door and walks to work, which was where he worked in real life.
 
Q: Ian Curtis is a mythical rock figure. Your film portrays him as being socially-awkward and mundane.  Do you think audiences will view him differently after seeing this?
AC: If you look at my work as a photographer, it’s not exactly about the high times in people’s lives. I think people’s lives are not a collection of highlights, life can be very mundane indeed, especially in Northern England. I felt it was important to depict that beautiful things can happen in mundane environs. You don’t need the best desk to write the best song.  Beauty comes from out of bad circumstances, I think that’s human.

 Q: Why do you think Ian finally felt he had enough and choose to stop living?
AC: Well he didn’t call me before he did it, so I can really only guess. I think a lot of it was the epilepsy and the side-effects of the drugs he was taking. Epilepsy wasn’t that well-researched at the time, it was viewed as a disease that mental patients had, therefore, it was not well researched.  It gave him violent mood-swings, combined with taking large amounts of alcohol I think he got into a hole which he felt he couldn’t emerge from.  He felt a large responsibility carrying the band to America with the possibility of having a fit on stage and destroying the bands future.  Plus, all of his marital problems probably made it seem like events had far greater proportions then was the case. I mean if you know two people really love you, you don’t commit suicide. Also, I don’t think people really listened to Ian’s lyrics until after he died. He was emoting through his songs and no one caught that.

Q: Can you talk about how you got such a great performance from first-time actor Sam Riley?
AC: Sam was a real find. He’s a singer and acted a little bit in his teenage years. He was working folding shirts at a laundry matt when we found him.  He really worked hard for us because I think he felt like it was a ticket out of that life. Of course he looked a lot like Ian Curtis, but he really went above and beyond in terms of researching, going to epilepsy seminars and watching everything that existed on Ian and Joy Division. I felt for him because it was a first film for both of us so we depended on each other.  Every single day he never complained and knew what was expected of him.  It must have been daunting working with one of the best actors today, Samantha Morton, but he held his ground. I think he’ll do some impressive things in the future. 

Q:  Do you think it’s a filmmaker’s responsibility to portray everything exactly as it occurred?
AC: Well, were not making a television series or a six-hour film so of course, you have to limit what you show or be economical in your portrayal, so long as it doesn’t effect how the person is seen. When Ian visits his parents at the end of the film, his parents in real life had moved to a different house. But we couldn’t take the time out to explain something like that.  Also how the band wound up getting signed was more complicated then depicted in the film.  In my eyes, these are trivialities that don’t effect the overall portrayal of the Ian or Joy Division. I’m very open about the choices I made, as I feel they don’t take anything away from what actually happened.

Q:  How did making this film change your approach to filmmaking?
AC: The one thing I really got out of this is working with actors. The storytelling concept I really covered in my photographs and videos so that wasn’t really new. Sure it’s a different medium, but here’s where I really got to see what actors could bring to a story and how they interpret things. I can’t wait to make another film because this was a great experience. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, probably because I also produced it, but wonderful. For all the black holes a film can fall into, to come out of this and have the film get shown at festivals is a great experience. 

Q: How much of the music in the film is Joy Division vs. newly recorded tracks?
AC: The only Joy Division tracks are Atmosphere and Love will Tear us Apart.  Anytime you see the band playing it’s the actors and not audio overlay.  It’s quite phenomenal to have the actors learning these songs. It’s far better for performance reasons and if you want to hear the original songs just play them at home. There will be a soundtrack: there’s bits of dialogue, the New Order score, as well as tracks from Velvet Underground, Killers and Throbbing Gristle. There are Joy Division tracks preformed both by Joy Division and the actors.

Q: This film has a melancholy air about it, what will your next film be like?
AC: I think I’m going to do a thriller, in color. A very different film, I can’t talk about it yet though.

Q: Can you explain some of your aesthetic choices on this film?
AC:  This film takes place in the seventies, a time when we moved at a slower pace.   Rapid-fire editing has changed the way we look at film and decreased out attention spans.  I like looking at people walk into a room, move their bodies and hands without relying on close-ups.  I like looking at a picture, not being guided by an editor. I don’t think the film is slow, but they’re moments of reflection. 

Part of the 45th New York Film Festival, Anton Corbijn's Control opens October 11th via The Weinstein Company.