Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger
Director: Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace
Cert: 15A
Starring: Liam Gallagher, Noel Gallagher, Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, Gem Archer, Andy Bell
Running Time: 2 hrs 3 mins
Don’t mention the war. Seventeen years ago, on August 28th, 2009, Noel and Liam Gallagher had a “frank and firm exchange of views” backstage at the Rock en Seine festival, on the outskirts of Paris, leading to the immediate, sensational break-up of Oasis after 18 years together as a band.
“It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight,” Noel posted online a few hours later. “People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer.”
The brothers’ falling-out and unexpected return for their reunion tour of 2025, which included a sold-out (and, controversially, dynamically priced) gig at Croke Park in Dublin, is the starting point for this noisy rockumentary.
Archive footage recalls the implosion before we enter the rehearsal room for six weeks of preparation for Oasis’s 41-show Live ’25 tour. But we never do get the lowdown on the big strop.
What actually happened? According to what Noel told the media in 2011, the Gallaghers had been rowing because Liam wanted to promote his clothing range in the band’s tour programmes.
“I didn’t think it was right for him to be flogging his gear to our fans,” the older brother said, proposing that Liam pay full rate for the adverts. “He couldn’t get his head around that. He hit the roof. Things really went downhill from there.”
It all culminated, according to Noel, with Liam throwing a plum at him in the dressingroom that night in France, then trying to hit him with a guitar. “He nearly took my face off with it,” the older brother said in the 2015 interview. “It was a really unnecessary, violent act.”
That account doesn’t materialise in the film. Instead, Noel and Liam appear together as an older, guarded and PR-wiser Oasis, still swearing and boasting about how their kids – who were kept apart by the famous feud – get “spangled” together every night.
The earlier band were a product of the hedonistic dance-rock mash-up that was Madchester, with wild psychedelic retreads such as Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets.
But Noel, a sometime roadie for the Carpets, had ambitions beyond the cultish Haçienda hootenanny. Right from Supersonic, Oasis’s first single, it was clear we were heading for stadiums to repeat the shuddering antics of classic rock acts such as The Rolling Stones and the popular Oasis soundalikes The Beatles.
Later records borrowed from 1960s flower power, stomping 1970s glam and, featured on the cover of their first LP, Burt Bacharach.
They proved, at the world’s raviest moment, that rock could still sell. Along the way they contributed to the odd collective meltdown that was Britpop.
At the height of it all, Liam and Patsy Kensit, his then wife, appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine, lying on a Union Jack-themed bed above the headline “London Swings Again!” (Carnaby Street is a bit of a hike from any Manchester housing estate, but never mind.)
It was a retro moment, just as the 2025 concerts were, yet it also satisfied a newly emerging swagger in the United Kingdom. This was working-class culture writ large and proud.
It was also a moment for the Irish. Noel sees himself as an Irishman who just happens to have been born in Manchester.
George Cragg’s editing is the star as the film swerves between peak-1990s clips, rousing choruses and big cities. The concerts themselves are thunderous, and the crowd bawl, booze and belt out every song.
“It’s more of a football crowd,” says the police officer co-ordinating security before the tour’s opening concert, in Cardiff. He’s right, but only in the impossible instance whereby both teams win. The visible outpouring of joy moves Noel to tears more than once.
Oldies are present and correct. But the huge Gen Z contingent is more surprising. (The documentary’s premiere at Venice film festival brought in a swarm of teenagers hoping to get their vinyls signed on the red carpet.)
The film’s inconsistent use of fan testimony often feels like an attempt to manufacture profundity. There’s a lovely moment with an Ulster mum and her non-verbal son listening to Talk Tonight. Elsewhere, the personal stories are often slight.
There are few outrageous, swaggering claims, save for a hypothesis that the world “went to shit” after Oasis split up. Perhaps that is the film’s strongest argument: Oasis offer escape, communal release and a version of belonging that feels vanishingly rare.
[ Mother from Mayo, father from Meath: How Irish are Oasis?Opens in new window ]
Yes, they know how much you paid for your ticket. When Liam calls out to the “cheap seats”, he follows up with, “Oh, wait: there are no cheap seats. Sorry about that.”
The rendition of The Auld Triangle by 80,000 Irish fans at Croke Park is special. But for all its noise, the film could do with more of what we most want to see: the Gallaghers being Gallaghers.
In cinemas from Wednesday, September 9th