Take the time to watch Grant Gee’s gorgeous Joy Division doc from 2007. This is the best of what music journalism / documentary can be. Just beautifully edited, artistically conceived, revealing and fascinating. We all know that the band was iconoclastic but I think that the context of postpunk modernism at large and the redemption of a city through the story of a band is what makes this film transcendent. Also featuring a HUGE design hero of mine — Peter Saville.

Here is part 1 of 10 :: (Click the video after playing to jump to YouTube and watch all 10 parts. It is TOTALLY worth watching.)

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Shortly after its release on DVD I watched the Joy Division rockumentary by Grant Gee (much acclaimed for similar stuff on Radiohead -’famous’ it seems-). Being a sort of old-skool fan I couldn’t escape the same sense of disappointment I had with Control. It was good, maybe even great in a way, but it certainly didn’t fully live up to my expectations. Not excluding my expectations to be the problem.

I regretted that Control didn’t fully capture the insights from Deborah Curtis’ heartbreaking book Touching From A Distance. The problem with this Joy Division rockumentary is that it is mainly a collection of people talking about the band, about Ian, but without much focus or coherence.

The influence and ‘atmosphere’ of the grey concrete of Manchester is visually well captured. The visionary approach of Martin Hannett -sound of breaking glass-. Peter Saville’s graphics. Authentic footage. All… nice.

But nothing on Warsaw? Their early recording? And no clear chronology or backgrounds on the making of the music, the songs. Confirmation that those who survived (aka New Order) can’t sit in the same room. I only liked Stephen Morris’ funny nervousness, kinda like his drumming.

Deborah Curtis preferred not to appear in a movie with a certain Mrs. Honoré in, but her contribution would have been tremendously bigger.

So, finality? It will probably never be. There are just… opinions.

The book finally came in. All is forgiven, Amazon. Welcome to our next page-by-page segment: Radiohead and Philosophy: Fitter Happier More Deductive. I’ve purchased the paperback version, ISBN 978-0-8126-9664-6, by Open Court, Chicago, Illinois.

Before we dive right in, though (our inaugural dispatch will skip ahead to page 161), a moment on the third word of the title: an amateur’s thoughts on philosophy in general.

Once, when I was about sixteen, I was taking an uninvited look through mom’s filing cabinet. There, among the Piddington and Pierce files was another, lean manila folder. Very lean. Anorexic. I said,

“You have a file on philosophy.”

She said, “It’s an idea that David M___ had.”

I said, “The file is empty.”

“And?”

“Empty, meaning there’s not a single piece of paper in it.”

“It’s a new file.”

“How new?”

“A few months.”

“You’re just now putting together a file on philosophy? And it’s empty?”

“It’s an idea that David M___ had.”

“And it’s mis-filed.”

“I probably misspelled it.”

“No, you spelled it right. You only filed it wrong.”

I only wish I was good enough to make this up. There could be no more illustrative vignette regarding the current state of American philosophy, and that dispatch is almost a quarter of a century old. (Yes, by the way: I know that Radiohead are not Americans.) We cannot distinguish philosophy from ethics. We cannot distinguish it from religion. We cannot distinguish it from opinions. Half of us would write it off as too scholarly, sight unseen.  We could not properly define it with a dictionary, and we sure wouldn’t recognize one in the field. Here is the American Heritage submission: “Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.”

Not bad. But I’m still none the wiser. I confess that if you caught me flat-footed I probably couldn’t define philosophy either.  But here is my Sitting At a Computer, Thinking About it for Several Minutes attempt (caveat emptor, it’s an oxymoron): “the science of the unobserved.”

I prefer the “science” reference because philosophy, like science, experiences constant, intense, and often withering peer review. This is by design. And as a corollary to that, philosophy, like science, is highly atomized: every one of us individually is an expert in the field of diet and exercise, just like every one of us is a qualified policy wonk.

But science deals with empirical data, observable problems: “can we develop such-and-such agricultural method in time to prevent tens of thousands of Zimbabweans dying of malnutrition?” Philosophy addresses everything else: “what is death?” “What is time?” “Should a man help other men?” None of this is exactly observable.

I’ll use the book for a more concrete example. See page 7, from the first essay, “Is Radiohead the Pink Floyd of the Twenty-First Century?” by George A. Reisch. Or just follow below:

Take “No Surprises.” [...] Wrapped in the plinkety-plink-plink music of a nursery rhyme or music box, the lyrics become less sarcastic (like The Kink’s “Shangri-La”) and more a study in the political infantilization — by cliché, chit-chat, conventional wisdom, and routine — of adults either unable or unwilling to live freely and creatively. Grant Gee’s video (in which Yorke sings the song with his head inside a glass or plastic sphere — more diving bell than space suit — that slowly fills with water) shows that these voting, mortgage-holding, commuters are drowning in passivity, ignorance and denial.

This is a cultural evergreen: the statement that capitalism (or the human condition, or industrialized society, or whatever your bête noire) drowns us, infantilizes us, stifles our creativity.  It’s been repeated so often that we all know it to be true.  But look at the specific terms: “capitalism” (too subjective), “human condition” (too ill-defined, totally unobservable), “industrialized society” (now we’re getting somewhere, but…), “drowns us” (demonstrably not true), “infantilizes us” (too ill-defined), “stifles our creativity” (too subjective). Even if those terms were improved to the point that they were totally objective, imagine testing the hypothosis scientifically, that, say, from 2000-2008, had global capitalism been replaced with an economic system a bit more sustainable (also too subjective, BTW), art would have improved.  The people would have felt less infantilized.  Fewer would have drowned in passivity, ignorance and denial.  Imagine the lab necessary to conduct that one.  Imagine the expense of peer review.

The philosophy of Radiohead, indeed.

I should also touch on the different branches of philosophy, namely the terms I will use, and the definitions I will presuppose: by “metaphysics” I will mean the philosophy of existence.  “Does God exist?”   “If not, why is there something instead of nothing, and how are we here?” “If so, how do we know?”

“Epistemology” is the philosophy of knowledge: “Are mathematical axioms to be considered laws of nature, or did we simply invent them as we went along?”  “Is there one absolute truth or many relative truths?”  (Those who doubt I will ever use this term again are probably right.)

“Ethics” is the philosophy of living one’s life, of our daily blueprint: “Is it acceptable to lie if it will improve my lot, and that of the person I am lying to?”  “Is it immoral to take illicit drugs?”

“Politics” — the philosophy of public policy — truly needs no introduction.  “Should gays be allowed to marry?”  “Should speed limits be reduced?”  “What manner of laws should be federal level, and what should be local?”  I’m told the list goes on.

“Aesthetics” — our jurisdiction here at tMiM so far — is the philosophy of beauty.  “What is music?”  “Why do we respond to music so differently than to other forms of art?“

Tobias will hate the term, but I also see room for “meta-philosophy,” or questions pertaining to the philosophical branches themselves.  “Should policy be written to outlaw all things immoral?”  Or here is a more timely one: “Should our views of religion instruct our views of politics?”

Stay tuned for our first dispatch: “Does political philosophy belong in music?”

Note that this post is one part in a series. To view all posts in the series, start here.

• 867-5.3.09 http://tinyurl.com/2jmo9g10:57 PM May 2nd from web

• .centaur of a tension.5:41 PM May 2nd from Ping.fm

• .the hades ballet. http://tinyurl.com/cufq9r4:44 PM May 2nd from web

• .you carnivores deserve swine flu for dining on innocent flesh.just think a bit.remember all that bacon you ate? .guilty.now go.and die.12:30 PM May 2nd from web

• @PixiePearl .you go wrestle @MelodieGore.i will wrestle www.martingore.com …in bed.12:27 PM May 2nd from web in reply to PixiePearl

• “We’re running out of alibis On the second of May Reminds me of the summer time On this winters day” www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS8…12:03 PM May 2nd from web

• 277 SONGS is taking shape. www.vjesci.net8:37 AM May 2nd from web

• “…Looked over and overlooked, glimpsed by the fall of death, Winter’s mourning and the May’s renewal.”9:37 PM May 1st from web

• http://twitpic.com/4ch0w – .just had a wee here.cute innit?7:53 AM May 1st from TwitPic

• “Since a cold night in May, too long ago to be more than Merely a cold and vivid memory.”1:37 AM May 1st from web

• .egyptian wyntre.10:54 PM Apr 30th from Ping.fm

• @rikkisimons .forget the logga battle suit.what you should be building me is a robert loggia battle suit. http://is.gd/vN4X9:06 PM Apr 30th from mobile web

• :w:8:41 PM Apr 30th from web

• .sphere candy.spiced cube.7:02 PM Apr 30th from Ping.fm

• @tenshirei .i thought all the best cowboys have daddy issues? .i only knew that because of @SensesFail .lost is lame.watch carnivàle.2:00 PM Apr 30th from mobile web

• “And the birds… ..and they break through the screens … ..to die… ..in the bedrooms.”1:50 PM Apr 30th from mobile web

• .still use the decoder ring i traded in box tops for.to decode the gobbledeegook emanating from the vocoder ring the computerettes gave me.12:28 PM Apr 30th from Ping.fm

• “Winter, winter, go away, hurry now be on your way! The little birds are singing, with joy their throats are ringing to welcome in the May.”8:36 AM Apr 30th from web

• “Now, you stay on the back roads. And you keep your gun handy. Our country is still full of thieving, murdering patriots.”6:30 AM Apr 30th from Ping.fm

• .finally saw panic in the year zero: www.is.gd/vDpI .magnicifent.and especially better than a certain @nineinchnails record.5:58 AM Apr 30th from Ping.fm

• @whitneyBUNNIE .if you liked fresh girls you ought to read the story of o: http://is.gd/vDbh and whores for gloria: http://is.gd/vDaU5:38 AM Apr 30th from mobile web

• “Note from neon mussolini: hello there, Im trying to promote my personnal & honest electronic/acoustic music about life” .no.4:37 AM Apr 30th from mobile web

• .love me or leave me.glove me or sleeve me.5:50 PM Apr 29th from Ping.fm

• @whitneyBUNNIE .oh no.i do appreciate ballet! .even have a favourite danser.vaslav nijinksy. http://is.gd/vuXW .found a copy of fresh girls.4:54 PM Apr 29th from mobile web

• .does any one here hate ballet enough that if i built a ballet-proof vest you would buy it?8:19 AM Apr 29th from web

• .donald darko duck. www.vjesci.net7:42 AM Apr 29th from Ping.fm

• .inqvisition time again.querelle is one of my favourite films…how are the two letters on the roof in http://is.gd/vgVH related to it?7:59 PM Apr 28th from Ping.fm

• .smoking in the boise room.7:52 PM Apr 28th from Ping.fm

• @honeymanko .finally saw the million dollar hotel because of you.other hotel things: .the white hotel.horror hotel.hotel persona.hotel womb.7:48 PM Apr 28th from mobile web

• “April 29, 1992 (Miami)” http://tinyurl.com/cplpm5:15 PM Apr 28th from web

• .the people who bring knives to gun fights are not very scarce.they are the same fools who check their brains at the chapel door.7:17 AM Apr 28th from Ping.fm

• .a view to a skill.performed by napoleon dynamite.5:13 AM Apr 28th from Ping.fm

• .gobsession.4:15 AM Apr 28th from Ping.fm

• @jaybakker .one punk under god? .the lyric was i am an anti christ.not i want to be jesus christ. “You call it religion You’re full of shit”5:31 PM Apr 27th from mobile web

• “Never let a person make you feel guilty for your anger with God.”7:47 AM Apr 27th from Ping.fm

• .vexperimenting with complimentary @DIRECTV .oodles of thirties films on @tcm and an episode of cathouse. @thebrooketaylor is too cute.7:43 PM Apr 26th from mobile web

• .keys turned in a white car.gene vincent sang be-bop-a-lula from the radio.i want to crawl on top of you now.like then.i am not that baby.1:29 PM Apr 26th from Ping.fm

• “It’s like your sweet cock is talking to me when you’re inside; it’s got this little voice all it’s own.”12:59 PM Apr 26th from Ping.fm

Cette semaine nous sommes bien reposés car cette semaine nous avons tous beaucoup dormi dans les salles obscures… Ce qui nous complique forcément un peu la tâche au moment de pitcher les bouts de films que nous y avons vu… Faut dire aussi que cette semaine nous n’avons pas été gâtés au niveau des sorties ciné. Alors on fait court.

Avec Jenny, Fanny, Marcel, Mathias.

• Tonight: The classic Jamaican crime film THE HARDER THEY COME starring reggae singer Jimmy Cliff screens at the Astor. [Astor]
• Tuesday: CineCult returns screening a sexuality-themed double bill: The Czechoslovakian surrealist work VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS (Jaromil Jires, 1970) and THE BEAST (Walerian Borowczyk, 1975), a monster-movie-meets-Jane-Austen-meets-porn film. [303]
• Wednesday: Cinematheque screens LÉON MORIN, PRÊTRE (Jean-Pierre Melvile, 1961) and the seminal French New Wave classic BREATHLESS (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960). [Cinematheque]
• Thursday: Grant Gee’s music doco JOY DIVISION at Rooftop. [Rooftop]

• “the suburban mystique is the absence of riddles” 7:14 PM Jan 24th from Ping.fm

• .i have had that rare privilege of seeing liquid sky on dvd.not quite classic celluloid but a glam trash gem for sure. http://is.gd/h45p 3:18 PM Jan 24th from Ping.fm

• .poole hall is slowly killing me : a letter kept and my reply. www.vjesci.net 3:22 AM Jan 24th from Ping.fm

• @Rayke “And money can’t buy everything. For example: poverty.” 2:45 AM Jan 24th from mobile web

• .and one more alice joins the fold to follow me down.some where out there is a lost page for each of you. http://is.gd/h16V 12:21 AM Jan 24th from mobile web

• .one hundred and fifteen of you alices now. http://tinyurl.com/cpntfg “bob dylans 115th dream” 12:05 AM Jan 24th from mobile web

• “The winter woods are wire and black And by a vivid death possessed…The scene is true as summer’s show, The woods of winter are a lie” 10:58 PM Jan 23rd from Ping.fm

• .on to shelves of dead wood shelf life is lowered. www.shelflife.co.uk 9:22 PM Jan 23rd from Ping.fm

• “I shall die very young.” “How young?” “I don’t know, maybe seventy, maybe eighty, maybe ninety. But I shall be very young.” 1:39 PM Jan 23rd from Ping.fm

• “Q: What do you call someone who has to drive to Vermont to get laid? A: A VT Cruiser.” – @rstevens 7:01 PM Jan 22nd from mobile web

• .I WANT YOV…to win my contest. www.vjesci.net .tell all your friends.knowing me is not an easy win.you only have to be insane to win this. 6:15 PM Jan 22nd from Ping.fm

• .howsabout a contest for my birthdæ where YOU win more followers & a bit of new traffic to YOUR site…peeling off my virtual skin as well? 5:37 PM Jan 22nd from mobile web

• “I firmly believe that the mental age of the average audience is about nine years” 3:18 PM Jan 22nd from Ping.fm

• .i recall i saw you strong.enough to sacrifice your hands.i saw you build the castle.you buried heaven in the sand.heaven is in the sand. 5:02 AM Jan 22nd from Ping.fm

• @TeanieBeans .when mother stripped for my poor education was it supposed to look like a scene from the full monty? 5:00 AM Jan 22nd from mobile web in reply to TeanieBeans

• @sueissilly .i would be only too glad to care for the pygmy if you are looking for a pair of appreciative eyes to bless before mæ first. 5:00 AM Jan 22nd from mobile web in reply to sueissilly

• @chaselisbon .on a scale of a to j imagine how ironic it would be if @apneatic actually died of sleep apnea.divine went that way. 12:50 AM Jan 22nd from mobile web in reply to chaselisbon

• .no coincidence that february seventh is my birth dæ and sleddale hall will soon be sold. www.is.gd/gtOM .withnail & vjesci.imagine it. 11:44 PM Jan 21st from Ping.fm

• www.thisisenglandmovie.co.uk .few films come so close to my youth. 9:02 PM Jan 21st from mobile web

• .blame canada.the national film board of canada has hundreds of films online.watch.and learn. www.nfb.ca .and follow. @thenfb 6:31 PM Jan 21st from mobile web

• “one and one and one is three” .six-hundred three-score and six more of you would look as perfect as cats. 4:47 PM Jan 21st from Ping.fm

• .there is a crack in the cowardice.there is a crack in the cowardice.there is a crack in the cowardice.there is a crack in the cowardice. 7:51 AM Jan 21st from Ping.fm

• @MindyR …except for that big hard excellent fish in the percolator.brushed my teeth with pie to flush the trout out of my mouth. 7:39 AM Jan 21st from mobile web in reply to MindyR

• .if you love me let me go to your head.if you love me let me go to your head.if you love me let me go to your head. 3:29 AM Jan 21st from mobile web

• @chaselisbon “Collecting everything we could of theirs, the Lisbon girls wouldn’t leave our minds but they were slipping away.” 3:26 AM Jan 21st from mobile web in reply to chaselisbon
• “When I came back up out of the dark (Tuesday) With the dark still on me, a kind of you Stared me down like a dead sun.” 2:11 AM Jan 21st from Ping.fm

• @Foodimentary www.kingcorn.net 2:07 AM Jan 21st from mobile web in reply to Foodimentary

• .cats walked the walls.how to tell a diamond from a burning baby.two excellent titles i wish were mine.alas to bunny lang they do belong. 12:56 AM Jan 21st from Ping.fm

• .eleventy followers.which i suppose is a fair number as i do try to give eleventy percent.ever attempting to avoid boring you all.xoVox. 12:53 AM Jan 21st from mobile web

• .i have written a letter to dada. 10:56 PM Jan 20th from mobile web

• @rstevens .seems no one will ever “get born” again. 10:55 PM Jan 20th from mobile web in reply to rstevens

• .to françois truffaut: i hope where ever you are there is some one forcing you to watch your own boring filmography.fahrenheit 451 excepted.… 6:52 PM Jan 20th from Ping.fm

• .the beasts of the wild will be led by a child found torn and more at the end of the mile. 5:17 PM Jan 20th from mobile web

• @courtstothemax .melius tarde quam nunquam. www.vjesci.tumblr.com 5:15 PM Jan 20th from mobile web in reply to courtstothemax

• @lwyntre .all that link proves is that a film could be named after an electrical weather phenomenon named after saint erasmus of formiae. 5:10 PM Jan 20th from mobile web in reply to lwyntre

• @churchofcoffee “It’s all in the beans…and I’m just full of beans.” — @DAVID_LYNCH 3:52 PM Jan 20th from mobile web in reply to churchofcoffee

• .i feel like penelope in the odyssey.who had as many suitors as i have followers.i feel like listening to 108 too. http://is.gd/gzCj 3:36 PM Jan 20th from mobile web

• @mouseinahouse .i was raised by the radiowaves but that ginger bread house was razed by microwaves.shit on the shingles and all. 3:16 PM Jan 20th from mobile web in reply to mouseinahouse

• “How strange is life! How full of dread! Here we all dangle from red thread.” 7:06 PM Jan 19th from Ping.fm

• www.standardoperatingproced… 6:22 PM Jan 19th from Ping.fm

• .for a moron you seem more off than on. 4:01 PM Jan 19th from Ping.fm

• .MiLK. 3:56 PM Jan 19th from mobile web

• .you can watch the entire www.joydivisionmovie.co.uk at http://pitchfork.tv/week/jo… .expires in less than seven dæs.gee. 5:57 PM Jan 18th from Ping.fm

• “NUTTING, ———ch. Josiah & Mary stillborn monster, Jan. 18, 1762″ 3:22 PM Jan 18th from Ping.fm

Die neue Doku über JOY DIVISION von Grant Gee und Jon Savage lohnt sich sehr. Das Beste daran: der Film handelt von Joy Division. Im Gegensatz zu CONTROL. Ist auch was für Manchester-Fans. Läuft im Eiszeit und im White Trash (die Website vom White Trash ist genauso unübersichtlich wie ihre Speisekarte, so dass ich auf Verlinkung verzichte).

> Review von Jens Balzer > Trailer

Grâce à des archives inédites et la collaboration des anciens membres du groupe, opérant aujourd’hui sous le nom de New Order, Grant Gee réalise ce documentaire sur Joy Division, groupe phare de la fin des années 1970.
Une nuit Joy Division est organisée samedi 18 octobre, de 20h à 5h, à l’Elysées-Biarritz (22 rue Quentin Bauchart métro George V, c’est une rue perpendiculaire aux Champs). La soirée coûte 10€.
Il y aura d’autres films, des expos, un DJ, une dédicace de Ian Curtis (quel humour ce Plansplan) !!!

De secretaris stapte onlangs op uitnodiging van de Voorzitter in de trein om hem te vergezellen naar Amsterdam, naar de muziekdocumentaire ‘Joy Division’ van producer Grant Gee. Deze draaide in de Melkweg en die deed z’n naam eer aan, want die leek voor ons van de aardbodem verdwenen. Als twee verdwaalde aliens vroegen we tot twee keer toe de weg om ten slotte twee minuten voor tijd als laatsten de zaal te betreden.

Gelukkig zorgde het gebodene ervoor dat we direct bij de les waren en niet alleen omdat het Manchesters accent zo moeilijk te verstaan was. Voor de Voorzitter en de secretaris was deze docu een aangename aanvulling op de film ‘Control’ van Anton Corbijn (zie ook een eerdere blog). In het eerste deel stond de opkomst van de groep centraal tegen de achtergrond van het grauwe, deprimerende stadsbeeld van Manchester. Het tweede deel zoomde in op de figuur van Ian Curtis eindigend bij zijn suicide op 18 mei 1980. De documentaire bevat een prettige afwisseling tussen interviews met direct betrokkenen (waaronder de overgebleven 3 bandleden), sfeerimpressies en -onmisbaar uiteraard- fragmenten van optredens.

hoes van Unknown Pleasures bron: www.tosq.com

Het blijft fascinerend om te zien hoe Curtis als gehypnotiseerd opgaat in zijn optredens (in tegenstelling tot wat sommigen menen af te leiden uit zijn voorkomen op de buhne, gebruikte hij geen drugs, wel nam hij op het laatst medicijnen tegen epilepsie). Dit komt tot uiting in zijn bizarre motoriek, die echter heel puur is. Werkelijk verbluffend is het dan ook dat Sam Riley deze bewegingen in Control op meesterlijke wijze imiteert. De muziek van Joy Division blijft ook boeien, met name de gitaarrifs die naar een climax toewerken.

Wat verder opviel, was dat de 3 andere bandleden (ze komen wat onbehouwen over tegenover de mythische figuur van Curtis) nauwelijks wisten wat Curtis met zijn poetische teksten bedoelde. Eenmaal echter samen op het podium werden ze spontaan een eenheid. Het oordeel van de secretaris +++1/2, maar de Voorzitter heeft het laatste woord!

Best bit about having a real job (apart from the awesome colleagues, the constant fondling of beautiful clothes made from beautiful yarn, and getting to say things like “How do we feel about Oxford commas?” and “More Helvetica!”): taking my first ever proper day off. I’m not meant to be studying. I’m not meant to be writing freelance. The kids are at school or with the childminder. I’m just having a day off – which means, wearing my pyjamas til the afternoon, eating chilli noodles for lunch, doing some non-work knitting, and watching movies…

Joy Division, dir. Grant Gee (2007)

In the course of the documentary, Peter Saville (graphic designer for Factory Records) points out that the entire output of Joy Division amounts to exactly two albums and a couple of singles: “Everything else is just merchandising. Merchandising memory.” Even out of that slim legacy, the amount I’ve actually listened to is shamefully narrow. “Transmission” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” have the high play-count you’d expect, while the rest of the catalogue sits on single-figures in my iTunes. Bernard Sumner mentions that listening back to the recording of Unknown Pleasures, he found it too dark to imagine listening to a whole album. The songs you know have an intensity and a perfection which seems too great to possibly be sustained over 45 minutes.

With the ferociously melodic rythm section of Peter Hook and Stephen Morris in the foreground, the band sounds sleek and jagged like a knife; Ian Curtis’s vocals are commanding yet indistinct, words sinking into the almost-American moan of his voice. Even when the subject matter is personal and domestic (“Love Will Tear Us Apart”), the music is like a threat from nowhere. The addition of synths to the sound increases the feeling that there is something not quite organic – something haunted – about them. The success of the documentary is in fixing Joy Division exactly in the grimy material culture of 1970s Manchester.

In the earlier live footage, Curtis’s vocals have clear Mancunian inflection, and again and again interviewees stress that they were “lads”. Working class, with tightly restricted career expectations (if you grew up in Salford, you were expected to work in the textiles factories, Morris points out), hopeless attitudes to women (in the extras, their manager’s widow awkwardly circumlocutes a whole mess of infidelity and thoughtlessness towards the wives and girlfriends who held down the day jobs while the band got established, and Tony Wilson speaks of Gilbert’s addition to the New Order line-up as solving the “misogyny” of Joy Division), and typical reticence in friendships (“But we were lads”, says Sumner, summing up everyone’s retrospective shock that no-one intervened as Curtis’s struggle with epilepsy and depression grew increasingly severe) – the impression is of band which was making something much bigger than themselves, and who weren’t completely aware of the music’s enormity.

But if the individual members come across as products of their home, so does the music. Matched with footage of Manchester in the 1970s (“I don’t think I saw a tree til I was nine”, says Sumner), the bleakness at which Joy Division railed seems not so much existential as very, very material. Poverty, dirt, grim concrete blocks of social housing, bombed-out holes from WWII – all of this feels intensely present in Joy Division’s precise, muscular music. And the sound of the old city became the foundation of a new, vibrant Manchester – according to Wilson, anyway, whose thesis that Joy Division’s fusion of punk and electronic music was the start of Manchester’s dance culture stands as the conclusion to the film.

With a clean visual style and sharp sound and visual editing (Peter Saville acted as a consultant on the documentary) which match the band exactly, the Joy Division documentary is elegeic, beautiful, and powerful. It’s exactly what the music is. And even though I’d have loved to have some more concert footage among the extras on the DVD, what you do get – a collection of snippets from the interviews which weren’t incorporated into the main film – is a perfect way to expand the messy byways of personal and social history in the film without settling on crass definitive judgements. (It’s reminiscent of the division between section one and section two of Jonothan Coe’s Like a Fiery Elephant, actually: another attempt to document the life of an artist whose work hinted at the mystic and ended in suicide. )

Up next: more post-punk genius, when I finally get round to blogging the Westwood exhibition.

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Joy Division, o filme/documentário já está nas salas. Depois de Control (2007) de Anton Corbjin agora Grant Gee propõe o olhar nu e cru sobre a banda de Manchester e coloca o mito de novo na ribalta. 28 anos depois da morte de Ian Curtis os alegres sobreviventes Peter Hook, Stephen Morris e Bernard Sumner, entre outros, percorrem as memórias do grupo desta vez com materiais genuínos e uma narrativa documental. Só pode ser de consumo obrigatório – trailler.