Life In A Bungalo

It’s a shame that some of the best movies (particularly documentaries) never get released to the mass audience. Case in point: Joy Division. This penetrating look at one of the best bands to ever come out of Manchester hammers home the fact that this quartet became legends in only two years time and only a few hundred people can say they’ve seen them live.

The film gathers the surviving members of Joy Division for conversational one-on-one interviews that delve into the birth and rise of the group. They chat earnestly about singer Ian Curtis’s epilepsy and how they chose to not talk about it rather than help him. Even more moving is how the band admits that they never really paid attention to Curtis’s lyrics and didn’t realize how dark they were until he hung himself.

The first portion of the film includes some rare early performances and legendary photos of the band shot by Anton Corbijn and others. In a live Q&A with a New York audience, the producer explained that the movie is lacking in early footage, but that’s not because they couldn’t get it. It just doesn’t exist. Few could afford cameras in the late ’70s, let alone video cameras.

Instead of layering interviews with live performances, the film uses artier shots of the interviewees contrasted against early photos of the artists. The most moving scenes come at the end of the film,

where videos of Ian Curtis performing JD songs are juxtaposed against new footage of New Order singing the same songs. “Joy Division” also includes a rare interview with Curtis’s lover Annik Honoré, who shares some insight into the difficulty Curtis had balancing a wife and child and a girlfriend. His wife, Debbie, is represented only in excerpts from her book.

“Joy Division” is a tremendous movie that sadly only made it to a few indie theaters. Luckily, it’s going to be released on DVD on June 17. Check it out.