This is a quite beautiful, intrinsic and simply made documentary about the band Joy Division, and about Manchester’s youths during the late 1970s and early 1980s. As a few lads congregated, learned their instruments and put together their landmark mal de vivre with the help of Martin Hammett in the shape of “Unknown Pleasures”, the life of the group is both professional and private. Ian Curtis’ life is high-lighted, and still not dissected from the view-point of Deborah Curtis. Annik Honoré, Curtis’ lover, is interviewed, as is a bunch of Manc people, e.g. the members of Joy Division, Richard Boon, Kevin Cummins, Paul Morley, Genesis P. Orridge. They’re not there to be name-dropped, but all bring good info to the table. Very little of what’s found in this documentary is filler. There is bootleg video included, a piece of a conversation between Curtis in hypnosis and Bernard Sumner, filmed scrawls from Rob Gretton’s note-book. All in all, a quite precious film, laying bare the landscape that was the preface, basis and aftermath of Joy Division. A very good music documentary indeed.

In Grant Gee’s Joy Division he tells the story of the band and those surrounding it. It’s stylish filmmaking and he pieces together the interviews, photographs, sounds and archival footage skillfully to create a full and moving portrait of a band that only had two albumns before the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis. Gee’s previous music documentary about Radiohead and their OK Computer tour, Meeting People is Easy was a downbeat and fascinating existential look at the soul-draining process of a gruelling tour. With Joy Division Gee relies on archival footage and audio presented in a visually interesting way. It’s respectful and for me it provided context for the Manchester scene and the people there. Some of the visual touches are quite clever with a running motif of titles that identify “Places That Aren’t There Any More” and displaying iTunes-like visualizations for audio-only interviews. It has just enough of the story and music to tell the story and give us a glimpse into the lives of the people who formed the band and who were left behind.