blur: To the End

I was always more of a "Blur" fan than an "Oasis" one, but to be honest I'd forgotten completely why they had split up. This fly-on-the-wall documentary tries to fill in some of the gaps as it reunites the four members of the band who are going to record their first new album in decades and do a little mini-tour of some "intimate" venues before a couple of gigs in front of eighty-odd thousand people at London's Wembley stadium. The film is centred around Damon Albarn's home in the South West of England and as Graham Coxon (anyone else think he's turning into Dudley Moore?), renowned cheesemaker Alex James and Dave Rowntree turn up it seems that there's a lot of forgiving and forgetting going on. There's a conversational candour from all four about their demise as a band. They couldn't stand the sight of one another - hardly surprising after living in each other's pockets for years, but it's clear that there is still something compelling, addictive even, about their relationships that will either float or sink this ambitions project that is proving nerve-wracking even now, after years of performing. I could have been doing with more of their music, if only to remind me there was more to them than "Boys and Girls" and "Parklife", and I could have done with less of their political hypocrisy as they live in safe conservative parliamentary seats whilst espousing urbanite socialism - but when it comes down to it, they are just four formerly quite handsome guys (yes, I know that's reductive!) who knew how to put lyrics and music into a format that mischievously and vibrantly entertained on a stage and on a television at a time when music in Britain was undoubtedly suffering from a creative malaise that was crying out for something different, energetic and powerful. I liked the style of this documentary and I liked the very fact that it's an episode in the lives of these four, now quite different, men. What happens next is anyone's guess.