Oasis’s comeback film is an electrifying glimpse at a lost, gilded age

Robbie CollinSat, September 5, 2026 at 7:35 PM UTC

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Noel, left, and Liam Gallagher promoting the behind-the-scenes Oasis film in Venice on Saturday - TIZIANA FABI/AFP

For an otherwise forthright behind-the-scenes account of the band’s reunion last year, Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger is oddly coy about the business of reuniting.

This boisterous, rousing and unexpectedly moving documentary, overseen by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, opens with a recap of the all-conquering Manchester rock group’s turbulent life cycle, from their scrappy 1991 origins to messy 2009 dissolution in Paris.

“Le groupe n’existe plus,” we hear an announcer sombrely inform the dismayed audience, with a twang of Sartrean gloom, following the mother of all fraternal bust-ups between the Gallagher brothers backstage.

But when they reassemble in a London rehearsal space around a decade and a half later – first Noel and three fellow veterans, then a few days later Liam, ambling in like a yak that has found itself caught up in a tent – whatever deals have been brokered and promises made remain discreetly off-screen.

Instead, stresses Noel, their 2025 stadium tour is all about repairing “the narrative”; in other words, giving Oasis and their fans the triumphant final act they collectively earned years ago but were never able to claim. Yet while the contractual wrangling might have been journalistically juicy, it probably wouldn’t have been that rock ’n’ roll.

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“We didn’t know how good we had it” comes for every generation eventually, but to see and hear Oasis perform these ageless anthems once more to vast, appreciative crowds feels like a bittersweet glimpse of a gilded age. It makes clear exactly what was lost in the grim cultural shifts of around 20 years ago, when it was decided that brazen, handmade, galvanising, unifying working-class art had no place in the mainstream, and wouldn’t it be safer if everyone listened to Taylor Swift.

The first concert in Cardiff is electrifying: as the band launch into their 1995 album opener Hello, I feel as if I have fallen into a swimming pool of goosebumps. Directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s cameras keep finding faces in the crowd whose expressions run the gamut from disbelief to elation. And it is striking how human everyone looks: no mugging for selfies or Instagram posturing, just unmediated emotion.

In an era of sanitised pop music, the Gallaghers’ Cardiff comeback is both electrifying and bittersweet - Oasis: Don't Look Back In Anger

After around half an hour of rehearsal footage and the Cardiff sequence, the film settles into a more predictable rhythm. Every classic song gets an airing, with present-day tour footage intercut with 1990s flashbacks. (The juxtaposition of young and middle-aged Liam lends a new, wistful angle to the lyrics of Live Forever.)

These are interspersed with tributes to crucial places and people in the Oasis story, as well as testimonies from individual fans, who share why particular Oasis tracks matter to them. Some of the latter are more interesting than others, though Southern and Lovelace salvage even the flatter ones by then following their subjects to a gig and training a camera on them when their song of choice plays live. And while new interviews with Liam and Noel ultimately reveal little, they prove neither brother has lost his flair for funny sound bites.

But the point is the music – and specifically its lasting therapeutic power, as it simultaneously heals the Gallaghers’ years-long rift and brings together thousands of strangers in these supposedly divided times. If Liam and Noel can patch things up, there may be hope for us all.

Screening at the Venice Film Festival. UK cinemas from Wednesday 9 September and on Disney+ later this year

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”