a bird is talking
i do not know the language of birds
the bird is sweet to hear
and see
my child, my son, my little bird
you are so small
the silken thread of love
ties you to me
while i am here
but it is so fragile
and thin
like gossamer
may its strength be like diamond ropes
Anton Corbijn –Control. A film review
This is his first directorial venture. The movie is in black and white.
The story goes like this. A young boy called Curtis who likes poetry impresses his friend’s girl by quoting Wordsworth and stealing her from his friend behind his back. He does drugs in the form of pill popping and likes David Bowie and Sex Pistols. He marries said girlfriend of friend who becomes his. He writes powerful poetry and goes on to become the singer and lyricist for a “tight” post-punk band called Joy Division. Picked up by a new label and a good manager they seem set for success, when Ian, the lead singer, whose wife is pregnant by now, finds life suddenly putting him on a slide. He holds a job at an employment agency. One day he finds a job for a differently-abled kid. Another day he suddenly comes face to face with epilepsy in the form of a girl who collapses in his office. His love for his wife notwithstanding, he soon begins to cool off in his ardor to her, realizing that they are different; she is solidly middle class and he the aesthetic bohemian. He spends sleepless nights, writing dark lyrics or out on gigs with the band. One day he collapses while going to a show, and is diagnosed with epilepsy. There is no cure. Meds, and sleepiness that come, as a result, ensure that soon he has to choose between his daily job and rock. He opts for his first love. One day while Joy Division begins to gather a cult following because of songs like Warsaw and She’s Lost Control -inspired by his wife’s inability to coax him into bed in the film - a journalist called Annik lands up from Belgium to interview them. Her looks and exotic name attract Ian and they fall in love with each other. She is drawn to his magnetic and charismatic Morrison-like voice and brooding presence on stage as well as the inscrutable personality that she thinks he is. The darkness of his depression lightens slightly when she is there. Soon his conscience and heart begin a fight with each other, in which he gets no help from anybody around him, at the end of which he commits suicide. His lyrics get progressively darker and more brilliant meanwhile, as he writes of his life, and his performances become more intense but they break him to the point where, along with his increasingly frequent episodes of epilepsy and first failed attempt at suicide, even going on stage becomes torture. He dies at the young age of 23.
I had heard of Joy Division before but not heard them. I feel this movie is the perfect introduction to the work of this young ‘genius’ and band because it is a restrained work. Anton Corbijn seems to know his Bergman and fine performances by the main actor and actress, sensitive editing and good camerawork all help to make this movie a classic in the rock music films genre. While not surprised at the awards it got and the fact that it is based on the memoirs of Ian’s wife and first-hand experiences of the director as a photographer with the band, what really struck me was the maturity with which Corbijn handles the life in question – by not connecting it with rock’s common myths of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll , for one thing, except subtly and in passing, but instead showing the inspiration for Ian’s poetry and getting us to empathize with him and his wife equally, something rarely tried in my experience before. In fact, it is Annik who comes out weaker, maybe because of where the script comes from. It is the ordinariness of Ian, the working man, who is caught in the sudden tragedy of epilepsy that takes him out of himself into being someone other than who he is and lures him to his doom that haunts us ultimately. That and the brilliantly shadowy live halls and bedroom scenes, not to mention the photomontage of portraiture of the characters that recurs constantly through the movie and the brief live band vignettes, the quotes, and the shots in the recording studio. The movie scores in not romanticizing and glamorizing the tragedy of Ian's life and showcases his curious 'butterfly' style of dancing that might have been influenced by his epilepsy. I remembered Dostoevsky briefly while watching it.
The movie was made in 2007. It got awards. If Corbijn makes another movie I, for one, will watch. Not to talk of my having begun to read Joy Division’s (Ian Curtis’s) lyrics and listen to their music. Corbijn is famous for his music videos.
I want to keep writing about sex and violence and other unsavoury matters openly because it is the lack of openness that leads to fascism, rape etc. These are brought about by suppression and repression in expression, communication, dialogue and conversation in public spaces that are safe, unlike such held in private - and as a society if we do not learn how to discuss these things sanely and reasonably openly art cannot work as therapy for our libidos.
He waxed eloquent on the virtues of emergent varieties of Indian feminism. I asked him if he had heard of Pallikudam. He had not. I asked him if he had heard of Mukti Mission. He had not. I asked him if the place Bharananganam being named rang any bell in him. No, he said. Asked him if he had heard of a Krupabai Sathianadhan. No, he said. Have you heard of Amy Carmichael and Ida Scudder? Rokkeya Begum? No. Who had he heard of then? Kamala Das, he told me proudly. She is one of them who epitomises what I mean. Kamala Surayya, I corrected him gently. I don't get your point, what you are trying to tell me, he said, a bit testily. I tried to explain in as clear, as simple, as brief a way as possible. "There's more things under heaven and on/in earth" than those that are written in your version of emerging Indian versions of feminist history, dear friend, I said, paraphrasing and twisting Shakespeare to explain. Don't know if he got it at all, but I had to leave it at that/there.
The white puppy playing around me
dancing, its tail wagging
The spiderlings
hatching
from a thousand eggs
The flames licking at the edges
of poems
burnt
to ashes
The water not hot enough
The lime too much
Both made sweet by love
Haunted by profane loves
lips and breasts unslaked, tasted, ditched
Memories
of ghosts and geishas
in the pell-mell of order that is rust
Blow off the dust, they live,
some even gleam.
Your heroes are not mine
and mine are unknown to you
My places to visit itinerary is different
as is my bucket list
I am the subaltern minority that speaks
Objects I hold special are not
ones you ever laid eyes on
and communities I value
are ones you never heard of
I am subterranean,
underground
It was always aliens, strangers, pilgrim history
so labelled by the majority
But unlike you did with 'them,' the Dalits
my history remains with me, not obliterated
as does my culture
I know how to listen, speak, read and write
and how to keep it all alive
down the aeons, if need be
Fahrenheit 451 won't get at it
or white ants.
My updated bio - Christian missionary, arsonist, anarchist, nihilist, destroyer, theatre of the absurd, public enemy no.1, sinner/saint, incorrigible, out and out rocker
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