Simon Reynolds clearly understands Joy Division’s music, mystery, and cultural significance, as evidenced by his impressive review of Anton Corbijn’s biopic, Control, in yesterday’s New York Times. In fact, there are few other writers I’d want to read on the subject:

“Yet there’s one crucial factor mentioned in Touching From a Distance that ‘Control’ strangely ignores: Mr. Curtis’s romantic fascination with rock stars who died young. In the book Ms. Curtis writes that her husband told her he had ‘no intention of living beyond his early 20s.’ This apparent death wish suggests that amid the depression and confusion, there was an aesthetic component to his fatal decision. From his teenage infatuation with glam rock to the attention he paid to record design, Mr. Curtis appreciated the power of gesture. Because his suicide preceded the release of Closer, it determined the album’s immediate reception and its long-term resonance. (In “The Eternal”, the narrator watches a funeral procession — his own?) It could be that Mr. Curtis planned it that way. He played a major role in choosing the album’s cover, a photograph of a sculpture tableau in a cemetery of the dead Christ surrounded by mourners.”