In the mid-90’s, there wasn’t a bigger rock band in the world
than Oasis. Led by siblings Noel and Liam Gallagher, the Manchester-based group
became the face of Britpop and the biggest thing to hit the British music scene
since the Fab Four. With “Oasis: Supersonic,” director Mat Whitecross
gives the band the “Behind the Music” treatment, charting their formation and
meteoric rise in all its brilliant, brawling, drug-addled (morning) glory.
At the heart of the band was the relationship between Liam
and Noel, which veered wildly between loving and contemptuous. It was a
sometimes violent rivalry; as one interviewee puts it, “Noel has a lot of
buttons, Liam has a lot of fingers.” Both gifted musicians and outsized
personalities, their relationship was both the band’s greatest strength and
what ultimately drove it into the ground.
That relationship was a whirlwind of ego and narcissism mixed
with a considerable self-destructive streak, and Whitecross
spends a good portion of the film on their exploits as the band quickly gained
a reputation as being a bunch of hooligans. Oasis members recount antics like
the time the entire band taking crystal meth (mistaking it for cocaine) right
before a gig and proceeded to take the stage and begin playing several
different songs simultaneously.
“Supersonic” is produced by Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees —
the team behind last year’s Amy Winehouse documentary, “Amy” — and Whitecross opts for a similar technique as that
Oscar-winning film. Voiceover taken from newly conducted interviews with the
band, family members, and various key players in the group’s early days play
over a plentiful collection of home movies, archival footage, and performance
clips tied together with some snazzy motion graphics. Whitecross
tosses in the occasional insight — such as suggesting that the brothers’
behavior charts back to an abusive father — but for the most part, the film
isn’t interested in delving too deeply.
The film ends with the band at the height of their
popularity, giving a massive pair of concerts in Knebworth
in 1996 (though the band didn’t actually call it quits until 2009). The doc
positions those concerts as the end of an era — both culturally and musically —
but the preceding two hours have given us such an insular view of the band’s
early rise that it’s difficult to tell for sure; a little more in the way of
context would have made its case a little stronger. Still, for fans of the
group (or music in general) the film offers a compelling, sometimes poignant,
and often very funny look inside one of the biggest acts in rock history.
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2016.
