\n\t\u201cBucket hats \u2013 cash or card!\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tThe great mystery about why Noel and Liam Gallagher<\/a> put aside their differences for a heavily promoted multi-million-dollar world stadium tour is never really addressed in this more-than-feature-length documentary. Instead, directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace look at what came out of it for the estranged brothers, offering an insider\u2019s view of perhaps \u2014 in the UK at least \u2014 one of the most crazily oversubscribed reunion tours of all time, notable for the fact that the band had gone up in a puff of smoke just seconds before their appearance at the 2009 Rock en Seine festival, leaving the audience and promoters furious. Even the band looks back at its behavior with horror; Liam marvels that they still had a fanbase, suggesting that if he were a fan he\u2019d have told Oasis to \u201cstick your songs up your f*ckin\u2019 arse, you shower.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThough it is essentially a concert film, Don\u2019t Look Back In Anger takes two adjacent angles on the band\u2019s story. One is the group\u2019s appeal: Oasis peaked in 1996\/7, seeming to confirm a theory that rock and pop music worked in ten-year cycles, starting with the emergence of Elvis Presley in the late \u201950s. Oasis and their rivals Blur went on to launch the second musical British Invasion of America, but, unlike Blur, Oasis ran out of road. Sibling rivalry was the least of their worries; although the band recorded seven albums, most people only remember two, and it is these records \u2014 their 1994 breakout Definitely Maybe, and its almost immediate follow-up (What\u2019s the Story) Morning Glory? \u2014 that form the bulk of the music that still commands an impressive international fandom.<\/p>\n \n\tThe first half of the movie reflects the response that came when the reunion was announced: No one could quite believe it. Like many films in the Venice<\/a> film festival this year, Don\u2019t Look Back In Anger deals with the concept of the self-made myth, and, in its heyday, an effective part of the Oasis myth is that anything could happen and usually did. Noel Gallagher<\/a> seldom gets the credit for this, being a rare example of a Malcolm McLaren-style impresario who directed the band while keeping his head down, knowing that the core of the band was Liam\u2019s ridiculous peacocking, not his melodic songs about magic pies. Oasis was always meant to be rock \u2019n\u2019 roll, and without Liam, they didn\u2019t have it.<\/p>\n \n\tThe divine force that brings them together \u2014 some might say their mother Peggy, who is curiously absent, even though Noel muses on the brother\u2019s solid Irish roots \u2014 is never quite explained, but the first scenes suggest that the foundations of the reunion were rocky from the get-go. In a vast rehearsal room that recalls the one The Beatles used to record Let it Be, Noel is uncertain whether Liam will even show. \u201cI just don\u2019t see it,\u201d he says. \u201cWill it fall apart again?\u201d He\u2019s not the only one, and someone taunts the band\u2019s returning rhythm guitarist, Paul \u201cBonehead\u201d Arthurs, missing from the band since 1999, with the same thought: \u201cYou\u2019ve come into the middle of a Gallagher sandwich, you c*nt.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBonehead, it transpires, is largely what was missing from the Oasis sound that sent their sales figures plummeting; the band\u2019s elephantine guitar grind is perfect for radio, and without him their sound was diluted, as Noel acknowledges. Blur started calling them (Status) Quoasis for this very reason, and it must have hurt, mainly because it\u2019s true. When Liam finally rocks up, and this is very much the mot juste, he is in quite amazingly good voice, given the recent sorry state of their closest rivals, The Stone Roses and, in particular, singer Ian Brown. Liam sweeps in like the ghost of Christmas Present and suddenly everyone \u2014 everyone being Noel \u2014 starts to wonder if this just might work after all.<\/p>\n \n\tThe first gig in Cardiff is a blinder, notable for the fact that, despite being the audience for a 30-year-old reformed heritage act, there are people under 30 and half of the adults still seem to have their own hair. These are not your average concertgoers, says the local police chief, this is more like a football crowd, and as such their passion for the band is tribal, bordering on religious. Says one fan, in all seriousness, the reunion is \u201clike the rebirth of Christ, or something\u201d (it\u2019s the \u201cor something\u201d that slays you).<\/p>\n \n\tThe band\u2019s appeal is certainly strange, given that their sound is an amalgam of punk, mod and glam with a huge chunk of The Beatles (in their prime, they looked more like The Fab Four than the cast of Sam Mendes\u2019 upcoming biopic). But somehow, with the obvious exception of The Beatles, Oasis has transcended its influences, and no one in the band quite knows why: Their sometimes-nonsensical lyrics, which once suggested they\u2019d spent too much time listening to \u201cI Am the Walrus,\u201d are now sung by crowds of up to 90,000 people, imbued with the same profundity afforded sacred ancient texts.<\/p>\n \n\tThe other storyline is how the Gallaghers came back from the brink and formed a newfound bond. This is given an almost mystical significance, made all the more ridiculous when an actual priest gives a sermon using the brothers as an object lesson in the value of forgiveness. The thing that actually seems to have happened is that Noel has finally understood that Liam, in his own way, is just as self-aware as he is; while giving a very funny diatribe about his stage presence, the famously static singer notes, \u201cYou\u2019re going to be doing this till you\u2019re 60, you don\u2019t want to do all that Mick Jagger shit.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAt two hours, it\u2019s a long haul if you\u2019re not a fan, and even if you are a fan, there are lots of unnecessary chats with fans from all over that will take away from the powerful live material. And as all roads must lead to Rome, it eventually leads to the band\u2019s \u201cStairway to Heaven,\u201d the sentimental song that gives the film its name and, in light of the famous phrase about familiarity, gives quite a lot of non-believers the heebie-jeebies. If you can grin and bear it and turn a blind eye to the repetition of scenes in which the Gallaghers reiterate their astonishment at this unexpected second act in their lives, Don\u2019t Look Back in Anger offers some useful information to nurture everyone\u2019s budding inner rock star. \u201cIt takes a lot of caring,\u201d says Liam, \u201cto not give a f*ck.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTitle: Oasis: Don\u2019t Look Back In Anger
Festival: Venice (Venice Open \u2013 Out of Competition)
Director: Dylan Southern, Will Lovelace
Screenwriter: Steven Knight
World sales: Disney
Running time: 2 hrs 2 mins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBucket hats \u2013 cash or card!\u201d The great mystery about why Noel and Liam Gallagher put aside their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,63533,344,63532,15936,69862],"class_list":["post-881472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-liam-gallagher","tag-movies","tag-noel-gallagher","tag-venice","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}