TRAGIC LIFE OF POP SINGER DOESN'T TRANSLATE ON FILM.

Byline: GLENN WHIPP 

>FILM CRITIC

Photographer Anton Corbijn apparently resisted making a film about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis because he didn't want his directorial debut to be a music-oriented movie.

Corbijn, best-known for his longstanding work with U2 and videos for Nirvana, figured a biopic about the doomed Curtis would further pigeonhole him as a "rock photographer."

So instead of a "music movie" Corbijn has fashioned a domestic drama that isn't all that interesting when it doesn't focus on -- guess what? -- the music. The film's first hour is electric, with Sam Riley (devastating as Curtis) and the other three actors playing Joy Division band members tearing through songs like "Transmission" and "She's Lost Control."

Corbijn knows how to assemble a shot, and he certainly understands the power of the music. The actors' re-created performances are fantastic; you don't lament the fact that there's very little actual Joy Division in the movie. Corbijn also captures Curtis' Manchester roots in a barren black-and-white that sets some kind of standard for making industrial England look beautiful.

So why is "Control" ultimately something of a disappointment? Maybe because after that first hour, it spends another hour hammering home Curtis' gnawing guilt over not really loving his long-suffering wife, Deborah (Samantha Morton), who he married at 19 and has now emotionally abandoned (along with their newborn daughter) for an affair with a Belgian hottie (Alexandra Maria Lara).

Maybe because Corbijn and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh fail to portray the depths of Curtis' depression so that when the young man hangs himself at the age of 23 in 1980, it's a strangely unmoving act.

Was Curtis consumed by the fear that his epileptic fits would one day control him? Was his depression a side effect of the drugs he was taking to control his epilepsy? Was he done in by the taxing nature of those manic, arm-swinging concert performances?

"When I'm up there singing, they don't understand how much I give ... and now they want more," Curtis laments on the eve of the band's first foray to the United States.

But aside from all the high-contrast monochrome moping, the lad seemed to be enjoying the rock 'n' roll life until this sudden change of heart. Did he not read the section in the rock star handbook about touring and balancing the wife and mistresses?

You also wish that the movie captured a little more of the intellectual curiosity of a man who named the band after a slang term, used by novelist Karol Cetinsky, for the prostitution wing of a Nazi concentration camp.

Credit the filmmakers for not mythologizing Curtis. However, he just might be a bigger enigma after watching "Control." Maybe it couldn't have been any other way.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

[e-mail]

CONTROL - Two and one half stars

>R: language, brief sex scene.

>Starring: Sam Riley, Samantha Morton.

>Director: Anton Corbijn.

>Running time: 2 hr. 1 min.

>Playing: Area wide.

>In a nutshell: Joy Division singer Ian Curtis remains an enigma, but actor Sam Riley is a revelation.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Sam Riley is able to capture the doomed characteristics of singer Ian Curtis, but the light script fails him.