Joy Division: The Movie

JOY DIVISION (Real To Reel)
Directed by: Grant Gee

Although Joy Division delves into the back story of one of rock's most influential and beloved bands, British music video director/cinematographer Grant Gee largely focuses on the short, tormented life of the group's ghostly-pale lead singer, Ian Curtis. Mixing archival performance footage, photographs and audio recordings with newly shot interviews, Joy Division casts the band as the first punk act to artfully reflect the complexities of working class British life through music.

Gee's camera is obsessed with architecture. He introduces the post-industrial Manchester of the '70s as a central character and fills the screen with multiple superimposed images of the cold, empty concrete apartment blocks that inspired the sad "interior landscape" of Joy Division's music.

The result is a surprisingly moving, disturbing and often cerebral film that shows how Curtis' downward spiral went unnoticed by his bandmates, manager and label, all of whom admit to being so absorbed with Joy Division's rising public notoriety that they didn't realize the depths of the lead singer's depression until he killed himself at the age of 23.