Two British films with common themes and characters but which approach their subjects from entirely differing perspectives and virtually opposite aesthetics. The first is Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People, which was produced in 2002. This film catalogues the rise and fall of Factory Records from its inception in 1976 with television presenter Tony Wilson running the show (sort of), through the highs and lows, the creation of the Hacienda (one of the most famous night clubs in the world) to the ultimate collapse of the entire movement under the weight of its own principles in the early 1990’s.
The first band Factory Records signed was Joy Division famously lead by Ian Curtis and much of the first half of the film centres on the band and how the members of the band come to terms with the suicide of their lead singer, and then eventually go on to become New Order. The second film in question is Anton Corbijin’s Control (one of Left Field Cinema’s top films of 2007) which more specifically concentrates on Joy Division and Ian Curtis’ personal life and choices, leading to his untimely death. The differences between the two films are entirely obvious to anyone who’s already seen both of them, but what I’m hoping to explore in this episode is how two films about the same world can be so different and why the creators of these films have taken such radically different approaches to their subjects.
24 Hour Party People is one of the most bizarre outlandish British films of the current decade, Michael Winterbottom is a chameleonic director who has been known to switch and alter the aesthetics of his films in vastly differing ways from one film to the next, from one subject to the next. Unlike some directors who adore and flaunt their visual signatures, you can watch three Winterbottom films in a row even three recent films like I Want You, 24 Hour Party People and Genova, and you’d be forgiven for not noticing they were made by the same man as their style and story have very little in common, of course with diversity in subject also comes a variance in quality which is probably why Winterbottom is not generally regarded as highly as some of his peers. With 24 Hour Party People, Winterbottom uses a tapestry of sources and forms a collage of differing formats, mixing actual archive footage from Granada Tonight (the show Tony Wilson formally hosted) with reconstructions and the main film itself, all of which are shot on mixture of video and film, and as the narrative progresses it appears that the quality of the film and video improves as the technology did in reality, the quality of the footage during the chronology matches the quality of the footage which would have been taken at the time, this visual innovation is fairly unique in cinema, creating the illusion that the end product has been shot when it is set over the course of many years rather than within a month or so (as most films are usually shot over a length of time around the thirty day mark). As a result the film feels like a mix of documentary and knowing reconstructions, not like the actors themselves are still the characters, but that the characters are performing as themselves in the past (it’s quite a confusing concept when you stop to think about it); the opening scene of the film where Tony Wilson is hand gliding for Granada Tonight for example is done by editing sections from the real programme into the reconstruction, then Tony Wilson (as played by Steve Coogan) breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to camera rather literally introducing the film, Steve Coogan never stops being Tony Wilson, but Wilson switches from Wilson of the time to Wilson at some unknown point narrating his story.
Whilst 24 Hour Party People’s visual approach is innovative, and post modern, Control by contrast is more traditional but still heavily influenced by the visual representations of Joy Division at the time. Director Anton Corbijn was formally a still photographer for the NME Magazine who felt such adjuration for Joy Division he moved to England from The Netherlands to photograph them, his images became iconic and are deeply associated with the band and so he approached the film visually as he’d approached the real band visually so many years earlier, in this case stark black and white imagery which resemble the stills he’d taken of the real Joy Division so many years earlier. Control is a straighter film, there is no breaking of the fourth wall, no talking directly to camera, its approach and style is singularly naturalistic taking influence from the Kitchen Sink Drama school of thought but with visually a beautiful style. Both Corbijn and Winterbottom have taken inspiration from the media used at the time of the Band and the Music scene, Winterbottom has done so more for quirk and effect and Corbijn has done so for personal reasons; interesting this distinction in motivation would also carry through to the films themselves; 24 Hour Party People is a quirky comedy drama, Control is a deeply personal tragedy. The two approaches tie into different views of the music industry. 24 Hour Party People is invested with the playfulness of a record label that gave catalogue numbers to notepaper [FAC 7] a hairdressing salon [FAC 98], sellotape [FAC 136] and an advertisement [FAC 231] (even Wilson’s funeral [FAC 501]); whilst Control is a more traditional serious piece where the music is important and the songs relate to the singers life. Where a discography is limited to the music.
An example of the differences is the recording of She’s Lost Control. In 24 Hour Party People there is a strong comedy overtone with innovative producer Martin Hannett, earlier seen recording silence, putting the drummer, Stephen Morris, on the roof of the studio to get the right drum sound and him still being there playing the pattern as the band leave in a car. In Control the song springs organically from Curtis’s life and is used as a biographical expression. The Martin Hannet comedy with the drummer is there, but it is a blink and you’ll miss it moment. As Curtis is emoting, Morris is at the side pressing an aerosol can in time to the music. But the comedy is an undertone, probably not recognised by most viewers, but a touch that adds texture.
The handling of epilepsy is very different: Control, focussing as it does on the individual, has it in the right historical moment, and much of the bands career takes place after Curtis’s diagnosis. The film looks at the medication he takes, the long list of side effects and the problems it causes in a music career where medical advice is to avoid late nights, stress and alcohol : 24 Hour Party People places romps through their career and places it just before Curtis’s suicide, as the band find out they are going to America. It is a simpler impressionistic view of a rise and sudden crash, akin to Wilson’s hang-glider report at the start of the film. 24 Hour Party People quotes John Ford approvingly “When forced to pick between truth and legend, print the legend”, whereas Control prefers to examine the truth. Both do their viewpoints great credit.
Another difference is in the Sex Pistols at Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall scenes. Control has no footage of the Pistols, just audio, and focuses on the Joy Division members as part of the audience all up and enjoying the concert in a traditionally filmed way. The concert is the filmic device to show the creation of the band. 24 Hour Party People is more complex; it has Wilson pointing out the characters that would define the whole Manchester music scene. He introduces the major players: Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley from the Buzzcocks, Stiff Kittens – soon to be Warsaw – then Joy Division, Mick Hucknall from Simply Red: all get individual crowd shots, but also footage of them in their pomp, live in concert. The Sex Pistols performance is shown and the audience sitting down, with a small proportion up and dancing, increasing in numbers as the song “No Fun” continues. It is a more complex sequence and shows the birth of a movement and what they would achieve rather than just a band.
24 Hour Party People’s main character is Tony Wilson, he’s the one man who seems to ties the threads of this music scene together, although he is not a musician, nor a manager, nor a businessman – he brings music, management, and business together, and is the main character as such not because its his adventure but because he was one of the few people to be there from start to finish and were it not for him Factory Records would never have existed. As the character of Wilson states in the film: “I’m a supporting character in my own story”. In this sense 24 Hour Party People only has minor characters – Ian Curtis included. For Control however Tony Wilson is again a supporting player in the more traditional sense but Control has a very clear main character and protagonist and that is Ian Curtis. There is quite a bit of cross over in casting between these two films, but for the purpose of this examination we will concentrate on, Curtis, Wilson and Rob Gretton who became Joy Division’s manager and later a key figure in Factory Records, between the two films Gretton is probably the closest in terms of casting choices, for 24 Hour Party People Paddy Considine was cast, Considine apparently captured Gretton so perfectly that people who knew the man before his death found his performance disconcerting and could not stand to be around Considine during the production because he reminded them of Gretton so much. In Control Gretton is played by Toby Kebbell – this is telling as Considine and Kebbell played brothers in the excellent Shane Meadow’s film Dead Man’s Shoes. Kebbell often brings a nervous energy to his performance and certainly the Gretton portrayed in the first half of 24 Hour Party People and through the whole of Control are very similar in appearance and manner. Curtis and Wilson are a different matter, Curtis is played by Sean Harris in 24 Hour Party People and by Sam Riley in Control, and whilst in general Riley received almost universal praise amongst film critics for his portrait of Curtis, amongst fans of Joy Division Harris is generally preferred. Of course it’s difficult to compare the two performances, Riley has an entire films narrative in which to convey the singers emotional and intellectual turmoil which would eventually lead to his suicide, over two hours is devoted to Curtis, his rise to fame, his marriage, his affairs, his depression, his offspring and of course his time as the front man of Joy Division; by contrast Harris has only a third of the time to play with the character and not even nearly the same level of detail is given to the Curtis of 24 Hour Party People because as already stated the film is not solely about Curtis. From a purely cosmetic point of view Harris appears closer to Curtis, Riley is possibly a little too good looking for the role, a factor which is overrided by the strength of Riley’s performance. It is possibly the physical similarity between the appearance of Harris and the real Curtis which informs the muso perspective on the matter. As for the matter of Wilson the opposite is true of the two films, Steve Coogan often is berated for his portrayal of Tony Wilson, some critics of the film feel that Coogan merely adopted his Alan Partridge persona (a comedy character Coogan played for many years) and as such phoned in his performance. This is where 24 Hour Party People takes its post modern approach to another level, as the fictional character of Alan Partridge is in fact partly based on the real life Tony Wilson, it’s not that Coogan is simply playing the role as if Wilson was Partridge, he was in fact playing Partridge as if he were Wilson. Confused? I know I am. However anyone who has watched Tony Wilson on his show Granada Tonight will know that although the dialogue of the film is very much Wilson’s style (a man who made a point of berating people using the widest possible vocabulary and humorous elegance) however Coogan’s delivery of the dialogue is highly exaggerated. Craig Parkinson plays Tony Wilson in Control and is not only less heightened and more realistic in his portrait of Wilson, but appears physically closer as well. It seems as a rule with these two films that whoever has more screen time resembles the real person less in a physical sense. However physicality not withstanding Craig Parkinson and Steve Coogan have been directed in different manners at the behest of each films director, this is again appropriate as Control’s director Corbjin aimed to create a more authentic and naturalistic portrayal of this world and 24 Hour Party People’s director Winterbottom was clearly more concerned with the overall insanity, unpredictability and outrageousness of the time and the larger than life characters who call it their story. Coogan’s portrayal of Wilson maybe less accurate as Wilson the individual but as an abstract construct and in part representing the chaotic reality of this music scene, and within the films post modern reality where it is possible to speak directly to the audience, Coogan’s Wilson is more accurate.
Both 24 Hour Party People and Control are excellent films for entirely differing reasons, the films style visually and directorially, the films cast, and the films stories are equally excellent despite being worlds apart. Where Control makes you care about the individual, 24 Hour Party People makes you care about the scene, the time, the place, the ethic. Interestingly even if you have no interest in Joy Division, New Order, the Hacienda or any of the bands that Factory Records signed both films are still compelling which is a testament to both directors, all the writers and other creative forces who’ve succeeded in both approaches for different reasons.
© M.Dawson
Disorder & Other Unknown Pleasures 