A.O. Scott likes Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis biopic:

The worst and most common failing in movies of this kind — biographies of artists, musicians in particular — is that they turn creativity into a symptom and fate into pathology. One of the great virtues of “Control” is that it does not fall into this trap. Where it might have been literal-minded and sentimental, it is instead enigmatic and moving, much in the manner of Joy Division’s best songs.

“Control” is opening today in New York. The Times also ran a feature on the two upcoming Joy Division films last weekend:

Both were made with the cooperation of those who best knew Mr. Curtis. “Control,” the feature directing debut of the portrait photographer Anton Corbijn, is loosely based on “Touching From a Distance,” a 1995 memoir by Mr. Curtis’s widow, Deborah, of their life together. “Joy Division,” directed by the music-video veteran Grant Gee and written by the author and critic Jon Savage, takes a panoramic approach, combining archival footage with revealing interviews of firsthand observers and Mr. Curtis’s surviving bandmates, who went on to form New Order.

Hitsville thinks “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is the greatest rock single of all time. As potent of any musical memory is the day the new Joy Division 12-inch came in to the sprawling Telegraph Ave. record store where I was working during college. It had that desolate Factory cover and was pressed, as some singles were in those days, on super-heavy vinyl. We put the thing on the turntable, turned up the volume and watched, as we liked to do, how the crowd in the store responded to a new song. Together we marveled first at the eight bars of guitar rave-up–and then the disconcerting, arresting, unforgettable synth line that came after. The force of the song lies not in its very sad lyrics or Curtis’ fine vocals, though both are powerful and, I think, timeless, but in that musical transition. It heralded first the end of punk rock and the beginning of post-punk, which however radical it sounded at the time is I guess of minor historical interest at this point. But it also reminded us, as Jonathan Richman and Talking Heads did, that punk is an idea not a sound; that it was personal as well as political and could be defiantly, insistently musical even as it adhered to verities of simplicity and (as the artist saw it) truth. Joy Division never equaled the majesty of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (New Order came close several times, notably with the single “Temptation”), but it didn’t have to. Curtis didn’t have to demonstrate the truth of the song, either, but he did.