control

so anyway, Closer is one of the great albums, a moment of perfection that few bands can dream of, let alone attain. side a (the first half for those of you who never had the record) is driving, doomy postpunk, but side b is something else altogether.

Now that I've realised how it's all gone wrong
Got to find some therapy, this treatment takes too long
Deep in the heart of where sympathy held sway
Got to find my destiny before it gets too late

it is also Ian Curtis' suicide note, some of the bleakest, most stirring poetry a lyricist has made. how does a man reach inside himself and find that?

i don't think you're any the wiser after watching Control, which was curiously hollow. i had no sense of who Curtis was. yet maybe this was the point, and i am not knocking the film on this account, because from what i know, this is how people felt about him. he was just an ordinary bloke, barring the epilepsy. quiet, a little moody, but not the tortured artist.

i cannot help feeling the resonances. i am a man from a small town that i wanted to escape, and i made bad choices that i cannot reconcile with who i am. Curtis struggled, or at least his wife Debbie makes out he does (the film is based on her book), to reconcile his conscience with his heart. he wanted to be a husband, a dad, a man, yet he couldn't stop loving the wrong woman.

the mistake he made was not to marry young though, so much as to marry the wrong sort of woman. Debbie clearly does not understand him or want to, and her idea of love is not to love who he is but to love in a radiative, broad but shallow way. is it understandable that he is attracted by a more exotic woman? the film really pushes the idea that he fell for Annik because she was alien to Macclesfield, willowy and clever, while Debbie was frumpy, burdened with a child. (i have to say, Samantha Morton is excellent as Debbie. she does not come from a privileged background, and you could feel her empathy for Debbie, her understanding.)

but Curtis was a poet, a Romantic, and wanted to feel it to the core. i am not excusing him, but i understand him. it's difficult to love someone who does not want you to be what you are, and only wants part of you, yet can't understand why you want to fulfil all of you.

Weary inside, now our heart's lost forever
Can't replace the fear or the thrill of the chase
These rituals showed up the door for our wanderings
Opened and shut, then slammed in our face

it is so difficult to love someone who does not even want to understand that, who does not want to read the message you are sending.

i found Control difficult to watch. a film about a man who does not feel he is leading his life, rather it is leading him, is too close to home. of course, i am not crushed by the weight of expectation, as he is. but the opposite hurts too: to have no one expect anything of you, to have no one want anything from you beyond the mundane.

do you know how disappointing that is? to feel you are capable of pulling down stars, but the people around you want candlelight?

i felt the key moment of the film, well, the moment with the most impact for me, came when Debbie and Ian went to a houseparty. Debbie and a mate are talking about Ian, how he is at ease at the party, which is something of a surprise, because we have the idea that he is a gauche, sensitive person. i am really feeling that, because i sometimes surprise mrs zen by being much more sociable than she credits. the mate says to Debbie, but he's pretty famous now though. and Debbie says, not to me he isn't.

that says it all to me.

the film closes on Atmosphere, one of the truly great pop songs. it is one of the songs that if you do not like it, the gulf between us is too great to be crossed. i am listening to it now, shivers running through me, a tear in my eye for Ian Curtis, 23 when he died, a soul in torment.

Walk in silence
Don't turn away, in silence
Your confusion
My illusion
Worn like a mask of self-hate
Confronts and then dies
Don't walk away

posted by Dr Zen @ 5:47 pm