Actually only Martin Gore talking about Corbijn
On Dutch TV being interviewed (you need to turn on the subtitles)
Interview when releasing his film debut, Control
Dave Calhoun is left in no doubt who called the shots on the new film about the life and death of Joy Division‘s Ian Curtis. Just don‘t call director Anton Corbijn a 'rock photographer'.
Anton Corbijn hates being called a rock photographer. True, he’s best known for photographing U2 in bare, black-and-white landscapes (check out the cover of ‘The Joshua Tree’, that’s one of his) and he first came to the UK from Holland 28 years ago as a 24-year-old photographer with the sole intention of putting Joy Division in front of his lens, but the 52-year-old still grumbles about how the British have pigeon-holed him as a snapper of musicians when, goddamn it, he’s an artiste. If in doubt, suggests Corbijn, take a glance at the covers of his books... You can safely assume that this topic has been bothering him for a while.
‘I have four main books,’ explains Corbijn over breakfast in a café in Belsize Park, where he has lived for nearly a decade. ‘And if you look at the covers of those four books, the first is grey, the second is of Clint Eastwood, the third is of Danny DeVito and the fourth is black. That is not typical for a rock photographer. I like to take a slightly intellectual approach to things, and rock photography is very different to that. I’m very defensive about it. In England, I get labelled, and I’ve never had a museum exhibition here, nothing. It’s unbelievable. In Europe, there have been major exhibitions of my work with incredible attendance. Without sounding pompous, I don’t think the English have realised the value of what I’ve done. There’s nobody like me. Anyway, that’s my little rant.’
True to the great tradition of portrait photographers, Corbijn is no shrinking violet. He’s an affable interviewee, polite and interesting, but you suspect that you wouldn’t want to cross him. At one point, I mention NME and a recent cover that it ran following the death of Tony Wilson.
‘I don’t do anything for NME any more,’ Corbijn says quietly. ‘I sued them a few times.’ He tells a story, too, of how Peter Hook, the bass player in Joy Division and New Order, ‘was ranting’ that Corbijn had too much control over his new feature film about Joy Division. Corbijn laughs off that accusation and wonders what else a director should have other than control, but still you wonder from where that particular moan originated.
Considering his gripe about being thought a rock photographer, it may not be the smartest move in the history of personal brand management for Corbijn to have opted for Joy Division’s Ian Curtis as the focus of his first feature. But, in other ways, it makes perfect sense: he photographed the band within two weeks of moving to England in 1980 and in the late 1980s made a video for the re-release of their single ‘Atmosphere’ at the request of Tony Wilson. The aesthetic of ‘Control’ is familiar from Corbijn’s photography: black-and-white, intimate, elegiac.
Whether or not the film does service to Corbijn’s perception in this country – and frankly that’s unimportant – it’s a good stab at filmmaking for someone who’s only previously made videos and shorts.
‘Control’ has already picked up awards and rave reviews at Cannes, Edinburgh and Toronto, and is certainly one of the more interesting British films to emerge this year. Twenty seven-year-old Sam Riley (you may have seen him play Mark E Smith in ‘24 Hour Party People’) plays Curtis in a film that’s respectful, sober and devoid of hysteria as it relates the push and pull between the life of a touring musician and that of a young husband and father. Curtis was suffering from epilepsy and struggling with his marriage when he hanged himself in his Macclesfield home in 1980.
The film begins with Curtis, still at school, meeting Deborah, his future wife, and ends with a beautiful shot of smoke rising out of a crematorium. It’s not a film of wild theories. Neither is it a series of highs and lows leading to tragedy. Instead it’s a considered portrait of what it means to be young, depressed, ill and a musician about to tour America. It stands as a tribute to the band’s music, too, with the actors playing Curtis, Hook, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris doing a decent job of playing Joy Division’s songs.
Corbijn admits that he knew little about cinema or filmmaking when he agreed to make the film. ‘I never have the time to go to the cinema.’ Rather it was his personal and professional connection to Curtis that gave him the confidence to agree to the project when offered Matt Greenhalgh’s script by producers.
‘For many years I wanted to do a film but I never had the courage to clear my desk and say, OK I’ll take a year off and do a film. I’m not educated as a filmmaker, so it’s quite a jump for me.’ He knew enough about his subject to be sure that he didn’t want ‘Control’ to be mythical, ‘just very human, a bit like my photography’.
At one point, the film became more personal than Corbijn may have wished. Funding fell through and he had to make up the shortfall with his own cash to avoid delaying the project. How much did he put in? ‘I put in half the budget.’ Which, by a rough calculation, amounts to £1 million. ‘If you’re an artist, it’s OK to put your money into your art. The advantage, in hindsight, is that you become the film, and the film becomes you, you breathe it. There’s nothing else in your world, and maybe that was very good for the film.’
‘Control’ opens on Oct 5.
He's influenced by German Expressionism and French New Wave
- A slidehare case study on his music video work
- BBC Radio 6 on the music
