CONTROL, however, is ultimately about Curtis' tumultuous marriage to his wife, Deborah (Samantha Morton), and the way that Joy Division became an aesthetic manifestation of his pain--one that was both physical (Curtis was an epileptic) and emotional. Corbijn evokes Curtis' hurt and isolation with both honesty and subtlety; a photographer originally, he frames each shot to look like a stark black-and-white photo from an album the audience was never meant to see, making Curtis' pain palpable and his eventual suicide that much more tragic. The overtones to the later suicide of Kurt Cobain are hard to avoid, but where Cobain's suicide has always been discussed in terms of the pressure he felt as a rock star, Curtis', as rendered by Corbijn, is a pain anyone could potentially be forced to suffer through.