There is a certain irony that the documentary about Oasis’s sold-out 2025 reunion tour would premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Because it was during the 2024 edition of La Biennale de Cinema that many film critics spent hours in between screenings, and sometimes during, no doubt, in the horrendous Ticketmaster online queues to try and secure tickets for one of the UK shows. This critic included! One remembers joining the online queue and heading into a film, only to come out once the credits rolled to find there were still four hours from the front of the line… and ultimately still unsuccessful. At least, the phone contract included free EU data roaming.
Enough digression though, back to Don’t Look Back In Anger…
“Dream a dream that never dies. Wipe them tears away now from your eyes”
A lyric from Champagne Supernova, the final song on the setlist for the reunion tour, and one that perfectly encapsulates the strength of feeling and emotion pouring out of the screen, and the cinema audience watching this unlikely, unbelievable, and momentous moment.
Fifteen years after Oasis broke up before a concert in Paris, it was announced that Liam and Noel would reunite for a comeback tour… and yet, until the moment they stepped back on stage arm-in-arm, there was still doubt in everyone’s minds, even theirs. After a whistle-stop look at the band’s rise and fall, the documentary picks up six weeks prior of their first gig in Cardiff, as the band begin rehearsals… albeit without Liam.
The camera repeatedly returns to a shot of a microphone without a singer. Alarm bells could have started ringing. Liam arrives the next day, walks up to the mic, sings his parts, then walks off while the rest of them are still playing the outro; there is barely any eye contact between the brothers; Noel remarks that Liam skipped the final run-through the night before their first show, and rocked up twenty minutes before the start of the gig.
And despite all that, when Liam raises Noel’s arm as they walk out on stage, it is as if the clocks have stopped. Wound back to the beginning, before everything that transpired between them. As the film reminds us, the first line Liam sang in their debut single Supersonic was “I need to be myself. I can be no one else”. Liam will always be Liam, and with the benefit of hindsight, and growing older and maybe wiser, everyone has finally realised he is a tide you must go with rather than fight against.
Film, like music, can transport us to a different time and place. The moment the band started playing their greatest hits to the Cardiff crowd, this critic was transported back to 1994-1995, when Oasis was the soundtrack to their youth. A time that heralded the birth of Britpop, New Labour, Trainspotting, etc. A time when the belief was that “things can only get better” and that anything was possible.
The way the concert footage is shot puts you right on stage and in the heart of the crowd. It allows those unable to get tickets at the time to feel like they were also there. Each city had a different cinematographer but each is shot with an infectious wave of energy that sweeps you up and takes you with the band on this historic return to the good old days. A true case of a playlist that is all killer, no filler.
The filmmakers make time to speak with fans from each country, about how they came to find the band and what they mean to them. However, this is blatantly obvious from the outpouring of emotion on the faces of the crowds in the stadiums.
It is time that could have been spent behind-the-scenes examining the evolving relationship and dynamic on the tour. Examining the highs and lows, the tensions, the forgiveness. We get snippets of this, for example, Noel talks about how their children got to meet each other for the first time on tour, or the effect learning about The Stone Roses bassist Mani’s death prior to a San Paulo show had on them.
That is the gold that could have been mined a bit more, however there are some lovely moments with the two brothers together at the end, ripping the piss out of each other, having seemingly finally buried the hatchet… and not in each others backs.
Is it normal for a music documentary to have you on the verge of tears on multiple occasions? Perhaps not, but Don’t Look Back In Anger had this critic looking back through tear-filled eyes. Delivering an infectious, joyful swagger down memory lane that can be enjoyed with or without plenty of cigarettes and alcohol.
Don’t Look Back In Anger is in UK cinemas from September 9
Rating: 
Director: Will Lovelace, Dylan Southern
Stars: Liam Gallagher, Noel Gallagher
Runtime: 122 minutes
Country: UK/Ireland
