Film Review - Joy Division

We Built This City On Rock'n'Roll

According to Grant Gee’s documentary Joy Division, in 1976, Manchester was an industrial city in ruin, desperately in need of being rebuilt by a punk rock movement, a movement which was created on the 4th of June when Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook separately attended the infamous Sex Pistols show at Manchester Lesser Trade Hall.

In this chronological re-telling of the history of the late 70s rock band, Joy Division rose from the broken and shattered remains of Manchester and ‘rebuilt’ the city with their bare hands with the release of their critically acclaimed debut Unknown Pleasures.

While this depiction is romantic, and their music had the British media performing cartwheels, months after their debut they still played to a "void in front of the stage" as band member Stephen Morris recalls. The layering between shots of Manchester in ruins and present day locations of former venues (titled in sequence as 'Things That Are Not There') suggest a desolate wasteland remaining without hope since the suicide of Ian Curtis in 1980.

The film is abundant with appearances from Joy Division’s remaining band members, and many others who were associated with the rise of the band (including the late Tony Wilson) however the re-counts seem too polished, almost scripted even.

While a great education for those with little exposure to the band, avid fans will gain little more than reaffirmation of facts that have been well documented in the past and while the film features rare archive footage and recordings from Joy Division’s short career, much of it is poor quality. Little mention is made of the hub of music surrounding Joy Division during that period, nor their impact of musicians around them.

Compared with Anton Corbijn’s recent biopic Control, Joy Division is less visually appealing and fails to pull the heart-strings, instead aiming to stick to the facts and remove the mystery behind the myth.

But in truth, as former band members re-tell the days leading up to the sudden end of Joy Division, you get the lasting impression that none of these men really, ever knew what was going on in the world and mind of Ian Curtis, nor do they know now.