Everybody Goes To Parties

Malcolm McLaren “Love Will…” – I went to see Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis biopic with a few of my friends over the weekend, and we all came out of it agreeing on three things:

1) Despite co-writing exactly one great song (“Love Will Tear Us Apart”), being an epileptic, getting married at a very young age, and committing suicide at 23, Ian Curtis was a dreadfully dull human being. Maybe that’s an overstatement, but there’s certainly not enough in his brief life to support the plot of a feature-length film.

2) We would have rather seen a movie about Bernard Sumner, who is at least twice as fascinating and about twenty times more talented than Curtis. Seriously, why do we need another iteration of the TRAGIC YOUNG ROCK STAR story when we could instead explore the inner workings of a dorky weirdo like Sumner? Or hell, what about Peter Hook? That guy is more interesting too. Even another movie about Tony Wilson would’ve been better.

3) The film is just awful; basically a pretentious tv movie. Granted, virtually all biopics are terrible — how could they not be when they are nearly always super-linear hagiographies with no real narrative momentum — but Control is an embarrassing mess of cliches, on-the-nose musical cues, and trite sentimentality. Really, don’t bother, even if you totally love Joy Division.

The B-52’s “Dance This Mess Around” – So what would be a better biopic? How about something that doesn’t attempt to force someone’s history into a neat arc? How about a movie that attempts to either express a thought about or emulate the feeling of a subject rather than provide a slanted history lesson? For example, imagine a film that captured the feeling of the B-52’s music and would put you in the context of their early career, as if you’re just a fly on the wall at one of their early gigs. No mythologizing, no attempts to tug at the viewers’ heartstrings by bringing up Ricky Wilson’s eventual AIDS-related death, but instead a celebration/investigation of a singular aesthetic, and of a time and a place. Maybe the world needs a movie that challenges its audience to reject the notion that misery and tragedy is what defines a great artist, and makes a case that eccentric, party-loving, ultra-kitschy, queer oddballs from the south capable of making a lyric like “I’m not no Limburger!” seem urgent and crucial have just as much (if not a lot more) to offer us than any given suicidal sad sack. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)