The announcement of Oasis’ reunion and comeback tour was the type of popular culture moment that happens a few times in a generation. Oasis was the voice of Britpop’s sonic youth movement throughout Gen X’s second wave of the British Invasion, but the duo’s breakup in 2009 solidified tabloid coverage of the Gallagher brothers as essential to their cultural history. The meteoric rise to prominence, confirmed by the record-breaking success of their debut album Definitely, Maybe, was such a compelling underdog story that it strengthened the desire to see a controversy of sorts undercut the unencumbered joy that Oasis generated from both working-class adolescents and rock historians. Such criticisms couldn’t be directed at their output; despite everything that’s known and speculated on about the Gallagher brothers, Oasis’ music is defined by emotionality and a sincere consideration of reality, which has made it nearly impossible to dismiss the continued outpouring of love as feckless nostalgia.
Oasis benefitted from the volatile press that followed them throughout the 1990s, the era in which 24/7 coverage of celebrities became a norm. If the other tabloid targets were forced by media pressure to act erratically, the Gallaghers fed off of the attention to inspire even more confrontative live performances. Oasis bucked the trend of bands that petered out as the result of in-fighting because sobriety didn’t affect the quality of their output, even if it became easier to note when Noel and Liam were locked in animosity towards one another. Although an 18-year run is more than what anyone would’ve expected from an explosive band, Oasis’ 2009 breakup was somber because they’d just entered their “elder statesman” era. Despite their relative youth, the Gallaghers were already one of the most influential modern rock bands, as evidenced by the DNA of their style seen in everything from Maroon 5 and Arctic Monkeys to Coldplay and the Killers. In hindsight, the notion that Oasis was ever in “competition” with Blur is hilarious.
Any reunion like the one Oasis embarked upon is prone to skepticism, given that their fissure had become shorthand for an untenable creative partnership. It’s further complicated by the generally consistent quality of Oasis’ output, which didn’t suggest that a reunion tour would be about redemption; their last studio album Dig Out Your Soul is among their best, and was already accepted as a fitting final statement. The only thing more shocking than the reconciliation of Noel and Liam was the sentiment expressed within the promotional campaign that this was a compassionate, loving event for fans that wasn’t set up to be a platform for self-destruction.
Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger is unique among musician documentaries because it’s not a concert film, but not an impromptu biography either. A traditional concert film in the vein of The Last Waltz or Stop Making Sense can leave room for an auteur to create a distinct work of art, but its goal is to replicate the experience of a live show. A celebrity documentary, the likes of which dominate Netflix and HBO, is a summary of their subject’s life and achievements that has little room for specificity. Even if there are some of these that approach the artist in a more academic manner (such as Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground), they rarely have a dominant narrative arc. Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger is a tweener; it’s the story of one tour that has conjured up potent memories for both its subjects and those who have made their music a core part of their lives.
The challenge that Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger faced is that there’s already been a definitive documentary about the Gallaghers in 2016’s Oasis: Supersonic, an A24 production re-released in IMAX that used archive footage and legacy connect materials to create a kaleidoscopic origin story. Oasis: Supersonic isn’t comprehensive because there are significant late-1990s controversies that are excluded, but it was nonetheless a didactic, immersive project that underwood the primal emotions involved in hearing Oasis’ music for the first time. The emphasis in Supersonic on the seemingly irreconcilable, eventual creative split felt like a final word.
It’s for that reason that Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger is an authentic depiction of reconciliation and a slick, polished film made by a director willing to engage with media narratives about the band. Steven Knight is among the most prolific writer-directors in Hollywood, credited as the creator of Peaky Blinders and House of Guinness, alongside Oscar-nominated films like Dirty Pretty Things, Spencer, Eastern Promises, and Allied. Knight isn’t a writer with an aptitude for subtlety, but he’s effective at drumming up emotions when the material calls for it, and circumstances gave him the perfect runway; the most poignant moment is a scene of fans singing “Don’t Look Back in Anger” at a vigil following the terrorist bombing of a concert in Manchester.
The question of ownership is addressed throughout Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger, and crystallized within a remark by Liam about wanting to treat the songs with “respect.” This isn’t a moment of self-aggrandizing, but a signifier that Oasis’ music has been kept alive by a fanbase that imbued it within their own memories. These songs would be remembered, regardless of how nasty the Gallagher brothers’ feud got, but the opportunity to give them one last showcase is as much a love letter to the fans as it is a comeback. It’s for this reason that Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger doesn’t feel like a reunion; it’s closer to a restoration.