When Anton Corbijn first heard the music of Joy Division, almost 30 years ago, it felt like a siren call across the North Sea. Within weeks, he had left his home in the Netherlands and was living in England and taking pictures of the Mancunian postpunk quartet. But just a few months later, in May 1980, their singer, Ian Curtis, was dead.

Like many others, the Dutch photographer detected something elemental in Joy Division’s jagged music and their singer’s traumatised poetry. Something more powerful than national borders.

“I had already considered moving, but when Joy Division came out I knew I had to be where that music came from,” recalls the 52-year-old Corbijn. “Ian’s voice was so strong, and their lyrics where exceptional. A lot of bands nowadays still find that an inspiration – Arcade Fire, Killers, Interpol, Editors. So many bands.”

After Curtis committed suicide, Corbijn became close to New Order, the band formed from Joy Division’s ashes. He also carved an international career as image-maker and video director to superstar bands including U2, Nirvana and Depeche Mode, all of whom owe at least a partial debt to Curtis. But another quarter century would pass before Corbijn was persuaded to turn the singer’s life story into a film.

Unlike most music biopics, Control opts for cool understatement. Downbeat and naturalistic, it refuses to turn Curtis into a rock legend. Making his impressive big-screen debut, Sam Riley portrays the singer as a plausibly troubled young father torn between his wife Debbie (Samantha Morton) and his lover Annik Honoré (Alexandra Maria Lara).

The director intended Control to be “more in the vein of Andrei Tarkovsky than Sid and Nancy”. But even this highbrow stylistic flourish is grounded in the gritty northern realism that helped to shape Joy Division’s urban, minimalist aesthetic.

Suicide transformed Curtis from a mesmerising singer into a personality cult. The iconic rock martyrs of the late 1960s and early 1970s came with a whiff of orgiastic excess. But Curtis was different, an ordinary young man tormented by epilepsy, depression and marital strife. Bernard Sumner, who replaced Curtis as singer when Joy Division evolved into New Order, is pleased that Control ended up as a human tragedy rather than a rock’n’roll fable.

“In one of the first discussions we had with Anton, I said I felt you shouldn’t have to be a Joy Division fan to enjoy the film,” Sumner says. “I didn’t want it to be a band film, a rock’n’roll film. I felt people who are not into rock music had to be able to relate to it as a story.”

Control opens just weeks after the death of Factory Records founder Tony Wilson, who has a co-producer credit and is sympathetically portrayed in the film by Craig Parkinson. Crucially, the film-makers also secured endorsement from Deborah Curtis and Annik Honoré. New Order also gave their support and collaborated on the soundtrack.

“I still get asked why Ian Curtis killed himself all the time,” says Sumner. “The film kind of explained that to me. He’d just got himself into a terrible position through making the wrong decisions. He’d made so many decisions about his life by the age of 21 – he’d got married, had a daughter, was in a band, left his job. He also had epilepsy and was on very heavy barbiturates that affected his mood and judgment. That’s enough to break any man.”

Control is released on Oct 5

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