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Joy Division and Tovarisch I Am Not Dead
The Manchester music scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s has already been explored in Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People and Anton Corbijn's Control. But, for all the knowing irony of the former's profile of Factory Records boss Anthony Wilson and the grim melodrama of the latter's study of troubled singer Ian Curtis, the feeling lingered that the full story had yet to be told. However, director Grant Gee and screenwriter Jon Savage have gone a long way to putting the record straight in the documentary, Joy Division.
Initially known as Warsaw, the band took its name from the brothels authorised by the Nazis and, at Curtis's insistence, it severed its punk roots during an intense six-month period following some misfiring debut gigs. Under the tutlelage of producer Martin Hannett, the combo made an immediate impression with the 1978 album Unknown Pleasures. But, before the release of the follow-up, Closer (which contained the seminal single Love Will Tear Us Apart), Curtis had committed suicide and a New Order had to be established.
The potential of a disturbed mind to astound is made manifest in this meticulous monochrome picture, which chronicles both the rise of Madchester from the ashes of post-industrial decay and the career of a band that came to epitomise the Factory ethos. With Matthew Robertson's graphics adding a visual edge, this impeccably researched history is packed with rare audio clips and live footage to provide an acute assessment of the music and lyrics that set Joy Division and New Order apart from their rivals.
But the most striking aspect is the frank and unsentimental nature of the recollections offered by alumni Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris, with Hook's anecdote about hearing of the bi-polar Curtis's death being dispassionate to the point of callousness. However, warmer insights are provided by the dying Tony Wilson and both Curtis's wife, Deborah (albeit in caption form only), and his Belgian lover, Annik Honoré.
f=Zapf Dingbats noThe rockumentary is still the most cluttered actuality sector, although tracts on the Middle East are fast catching up. Another burgeoning sub-genre is the filial memoir, with Nadav Schirman's The Champagne Spy, Nathaniel Khan's My Architect and Mark Wexler's Tell Them Who You Are now being joined by Stuart Urban's Tovarisch, I Am Not Dead.
Garri Urban was clearly a remarkable character, whose experiences ranged from fleeing the Russian Revolution as a child to surviving the Holocaust and being hunted by the KGB. However, his testy temperament and unreliable memory strained relations with his film-making son as they travelled through Eastern Europe to visit the people and places that shaped Garri's destiny. Consequently, this becomes an intriguing investigation into a father's colourful past by a child whose willingness to believe is occasionally undermined by a frustrating absence of corroborating documentation.
The roguish charmer has a tendency to play up to the camera. However, his reunions with old flame Noka Kapranova and long-lost brother Misha are genuinely moving, as is his return to the Ukrainian village where his parents perished at the hands of the Nazis. But his consistent failure to gain access to police records casts the odd doubt over his story. Not that his tales ever match those of controversial author Norma Khouri, whose inability to find evidence to prove the occurrence of the honour killing described in her bestseller Forbidden Love makes Anna Broinowski's recent documentary Forbidden Lie$ so utterly compelling and one to keep an eye out for on DVD.
5:30pm Wednesday 30th April 2008
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