Joy Division

Grant Gee, director of the Radiohead tour documentary Meeting People Is Easy, offers another excellent example of pop music cinema. Stylistically, the film is more of a traditional documentary than the Radiohead film, constructing its narrative through interviews with various denizens of the Manchester post-punk scene, bandmembers Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris included.

The formalist experimentation of Meeting People Is Easy does reappear at various moments, most successfully in montages contrasting modern Manchester with the decaying metropolis of the late 70s. Gee is skilled at framing shots of urban landscapes that exude a certain bleary ennui. That theme was a main component of Meeting People Is Easy, and of Radiohead's OK Computer, but here a better connection is drawn between Joy Division's restless, relentlessly modern music, the society that shaped it, and the cutting edge production techniques of Martin Hannett that made Unknown Pleasures and Closer such bracing listening experiences.

Furthermore, while the Factory Records saga has been dramatized a couple of times in recent years, it is still exhilirating to hear principle figures such as Tony Wilson, Paul Morley and Peter Saville recount their experiences. What is most striking is the element of social critique present in the commentaries. One gets the impression of the Manchester scene as a collection of serious individuals who were well aware of the attack they were levelling against modern society, whether explicitly or implicitly, as in the disquiet at the heart of all Joy Division songs. Perhaps it is inevitable that a retrospective film would gain deeper insight, but it is still remarkable to contrast the cogent awareness of the Manchester principles with the flailing discomfort of Thom Yorke in Meeting People Is Easy.

Some sort of generational (perhaps educational?) divide separates the two bands and allows the Manchester punks to be commentators with a directive, i.e. socialism, and yet prevents Radiohead from being more than essayers of alienation. Joy Division drive straight to the heart of disaffection, and while clumsy, their WWII allusions at least attempt an analogy to explain modern suffering. Radiohead, a truly great band no doubt, have always seemed hamstrung by the possibility of saying too much, as if this late in the game there is no possible cause or ideology to get behind.

Then again, this could be further proof that Radiohead are the perfect embodiment of their own time, just as Joy Division were in 1979. And of course its impossible to ignore the fact that Ian Curtis gave up on life. But still the attitude of the Manchester scene and the simple, direct power of the music illustrates the basic destitution of modern pop music. Its just a shame that the promise of Joy Division was snuffed out on May 18, 1980.