Ray Charles = Johnny Cash = Ian Curtis

It occurred to be while watching Anton Corbijn’s Control that maybe the reason I don’t like spending time or making friends with artists has something to do with all the biopics I’ve seen in my life.

Ian Curtis – a vocalist and songwriter whose music I admire and occasionally get down to, and would never confuse with, say, the soulful songs of Ray Charles or the melancholy ballads of Johnny Cash – comes off in Control like the same person as Ray Charles in Ray and Johnny Cash in Walk the Line.

The funny thing about biopics is that they usually intend to elevate their subject above other people – the one man who stood out, who was too much of a genius and a retard to play well with others, who couldn’t be a good artist and a good husband let alone a good dad, etc. And yet, the stupefying similarity of all biopics to one another seems to suggest that these great men aren’t so special after all.

That is to say, all of the genealogical details that make these iconic figures distinct – both in terms of their music and the vastly different subcultures they spawned – when adapted by filmmakers, who presumably are interested in celebrating their distinctness, somehow become seamlessly uniform.

Does this tell us something about the biopic as a genre? What we know is that they make for great vanity projects. Let’s be fair: sometimes, for great performances. Sam Riley is very convincing in the role of Ian Curtis; his relative anonymity allows him to slip into the rock star’s skin with fewer distractions for the viewer than with a Jamie Foxx or a Joaquin Phoenix.

What we also know is that if you like the music, you’ll enjoy at least parts of the movie. (I am focusing here on music biopics; it's not as clear to me whether a fan of Capote's writing would necessarily appreciate the writing of Bennett Miller.) For the record, the rock scenes in Control are very satisfying, the rerecorded music (sounding very akin to the original) blares out of black and white images that look like an animated Joy Division album cover.

But the narrative that holds these elements in place – or, in other words, that which the filmmakers add to the music we already own and the legend we’ve already heard about – seems only to be valuable, as far as I’m concerned, insofar as it suggests, rather subversively if unintentionally, that celebrated artists do not merit our attention outside of the work they create.

So let the title of this piece serve as a cautionary warning to any icon out there whose life hasn’t yet been optioned into a biopic. Unless it’s Orson Welles or Todd Haynes helming, odds are that the intricacies of your life and work will wind up steamrolled into that VH1 formula, which will paint you as, ultimately, not that dissimilar from me. Borrring.