Dancing With The Devil

Sidney Lumet has been responsible for probably some of the greatest American films we have seen. Like any filmmaker whose been around for half a century though, he's also given us films that seem destined only to keep those involved working. Now over 80, any output we get from him is admirable and met with hopes of another 'Dog Day Afternoon' or 'The Verdict'. His latest, 'Before The Devil Knows You're Dead', is not exactly a classic, but certainly worthy of his legacy.
Here he returns to the heist-gone-wrong intensity of 'Dog Day...'. But this time, Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his younger brother Hank (Ethan Hawke) are trying to cover up their involvement in a botched robbery that left their accomplice and mother dead. Things escalate as their father (a heartbreaking Albert Finney) becomes obsessed with the case and the accomplice's family blackmails them for compensation.
Lumet's success here is the sense of absolute panic. As the film unfolds, both brothers get further and further away from any hope of going back to their lives; the turbulence of which drove them to the robbery in the first place. Andy is embezzling from his company, out of love with his wife, and shooting heroin to deal with it all. Hank is just a classic fuck up who's up to his neck in child support. Both the leads play stress so fully that you just want the situation to resolve itself however it may. They sweat, they shake, and behave so erratically that you can feel whatever is left of them slip away. Hoffman in particular takes the stress to a level of hopelessness. After Andy's wife finally leaves him, he casually wipes all items off of the tables and dressers, pours a bowl of rocks onto his coffee table, and finally curls up in bed; fully clothed and crippled with stress. Finney also rises to the occasion here. His grief-stricken widower gives us the sense that some drastic, desperate behavior is imminent.
Lumet's failures? Well, the film just...ends. After spending two hours engrossed in these people's lives, it just feels like we all ran out of time. The chopped-up timeline doesn't really succeed more than a linear one. Our feelings for Andy and Frank are too ambiguous. As a movie audience, we can't help wanting them to succeed. On the other hand; they're selfish, greedy, and care more about getting caught than they do about their involvement in their own mother's death. In the end, the film isn't really a shared journey with the characters. Instead, it feels darkly voyeuristic and quietly judgmental.

Explaining The Suicide Of Ian Curtis

Anyone familiar with Joy Division's music surely has come away from it with a sense of alienation, isolation, and pressure. Singer Ian Curtis once described the sound of Joy Division as the death of youthful innocence. 'Control'; the directorial debut for long-time photographer and music video director, Anton Corbijn; portrays Curtis from the time he met his wife Deborah until his suicide seven years later. Fans of Joy Division's music may be disappointed here, as there is little insight into what drove the foursome to their pioneering sound. Instead, the film is more an attempt to explain the death of Curtis's own innocence, which surely led to his death at a very young 23.
Newcomer Sam Riley is the film's godsend. He has Curtis's look, body type, and doomed voice - with which he sings the songs himself. He very purely shows us Curtis as an alienated young man who wanted it all, got it, and couldn't fulfill all the expectations that came with them. He felt trapped in his marriage, pressured in his band, unable to let go of his mistress, and terrified by his epilepsy. All this was made worse by the extreme lows that could be brought on by the medication he took for it, which often made him a very differrent person. Having brought much of it on himself, Riley's Curtis is no longer innocent. Onstage, he perfectly nails the iconic singer. The eye-rolling facial contortions; the stepping in place while grabbing the microphone stand as if for dear life; and his legendary arm-spinning, contortionistic dancing. Offstage he also captures Curtis's drastic lows with the same autheticity. His tears and seizures very accutely paint a broken man.
Corbijn's attention to detail is astonishing. The shit-talking, the backstage rooms, the band's onstage posture and clothes, the biting sarcasm, and the hilariously pissy manager (masterfully played by Toby Kebbell). He shoots 'Control' in stark black and white - which is just as bleakly beautiful as the band's sound; and fills the background with the music that fueled the band's imagination: Bowie, Roxy Music, and The Velvet Underground.
Again, die-hards may be put off by the decision to focus more on Curtis and less on what made the band so unique. There are no song writing scenes, no real outside praise, and little focus on landmark songs and albums. Riley does provide the occasional voice-over narration that helps pin the words to the man. When his marriage seemed truly doomed, we hear him recite the first lines of 'Twenty Four Hours': "So this is permanence. Love's shattered pride. What once was innocence, turned on its side". And for the film's opening shot, we see Riley sitting on the floor of a darkened bedroom as his voice-over reads Curtis's quintessential cry of existential doom: "Existence, well what does it matter? I'll exist on the best terms I can. The past is now part of my future. The present is well out of hand."