Heart&Soul of Manchester – Joy Division

A Look into Joy Division, Ian Curtis and Urban Manchester

Words – Davida Aronovitch

: As the camera hovers over the iridescent night skyline of modern Manchester, the opening lines of Joy Division establish the theme that proves central to its representation of the band: “I don’t think of this as a documentary of a pop band, I think of it as a documentary of a city.”

Director Grant Gee posits famed rock group Joy Division as, simultaneously, a catalyst and product of Manchester’s 1970s industrial aesthetic, and then its later urban renewal. He tracks the roots of the band to the oppressive and grimy ugliness of the city which spurred their search for beauty, and as band member Bernard Sumner explains, “I don’t think I saw a tree until I was nine”. From this bleak backdrop—where rectangular concrete apartments and brick complexes stretch out in endless identical rows and children play in the street—sprang forth a band that gave birth to, and participated in an urban revolution.

Gee retraces the changed face of Manchester through the band’s own progression, layering translucent images of past sites and faces with their present incarnations in a nostalgic evocation of the post-industrial city. Other sites he lists as “things no longer there”, as if to suggest the urban center’s, and the band’s, fragile ephemerality. The visual effects provide constant excitement for the eye, with retro light projections, album art, and live concert footage showing an animated Ian Cutis.

The dynamism of the film’s aesthetics is nicely rounded out by the collection of Joy Division notables who contribute interviews and intimacy to Gee’s vision, including recently deceased Factory Records Executive Tony Wilson, the magnetic Annik Honoré (Curtis’ lover), and the three surviving band members. Timely editing brings out the most from the conversations, which have an earnest and occasionally comic feel. One conspicuous absence—that of Curtis’ wife Deborah—is compensated with excerpts from her biography, Touching from a Distance.

While these testimonies offer insight into the band and the era in which they worked, it may seem to some Division fans that Gee has not revealed much new concerning the group, or the suicide of its lead singer. It is perhaps true that the documentary lacks any groundbreaking discoveries or information, but it nonetheless casts the origin and importance of the band in a new light by forcefully reasserting Joy Division’s importance in musical culture, and its role in inspiring a new visual and urban culture of which it was as much catalyst as creation.