Word: corbijn
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Musicians have come to trust that visual instinct implicitly. "He has an understanding and an ability to manipulate light, and - far beyond that - a love and desire to perceive the human condition," says Michael Stipe, lead singer of R.E.M. Corbijn has photographed Stipe neck-high in the ocean and once woke him at 6 a.m. to catch the dawn light for a shoot. It's a testament to the respect Corbijn commands that pampered rock stars let him photograph them crawling naked along a riverbank (Iggy Pop), cross-dressing (Dave Grohl) or in a loincloth (David Bowie). They turn...
...that sense his move to movies couldn't be more natural. Corbijn sees Control not as a typical rock biopic or music film, but as "a tragic love story with great music." Based on the book Touching From a Distance by Curtis' wife, Debbie (played by the Oscar-nominated British actress Samantha Morton), it's a familiar tale: Debbie and Curtis, brought movingly back to life by newcomer Sam Riley, meet and marry as teenagers; Curtis joins the band and, while on tour, begins an affair with an exotic Belgian, leaving Debbie at home to take care of their baby...
...film's first public showing at Cannes in May, Control won three awards and critical raves. Morton, who has previously acted for directors like Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen, was similarly dazzled by Corbijn's debut. "His instincts were not just from a visual point of view; I found his development of the character really fascinating," she says. "For someone who's never made a film before to make a film that brilliant, to get the performances he got out of us, and to carry it, I just think he's extraordinary." For good measure, he pulled this off while...
R.E.M.'s Stipe draws the link between Corbijn's departure into film and his "audacious and courageous" move to London in 1979: "For a wildly successful, internationally known artist to shift mediums at the age of 52, and to have Ian Curtis as the subject of his premier feature, I think brings his odyssey full circle...
...Corbijn is of the same mind. He really does seem to have completed his musical mission, and perhaps exorcised some ghosts along the way. He's mulling a few scripts and ideas, "none of which are music-related," he says, and he is so determined to start a new chapter that he now plans to leave England and move back to the Netherlands. "I came for Joy Division, I've made my movie," he says. Granted, it took 28 years, but Corbijn still has the time and the passion to recast his powerful vision...