blur: To The End review – flails for a sense of nar­ra­tive closure

With To the End, Blur have now released well over dou­ble the min­utes of doc­u­men­tary film about their spo­radic post-2009 reunion (296) than they have new stu­dio music (113, round­ed up). 2010’s No Dis­tance Left to Run chron­i­cled their pre-break-up his­to­ry, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and jour­ney towards two momen­tous head­line shows at Glas­ton­bury and Hyde Park. 2015’s New World Tow­ers doc­u­ment­ed the spon­ta­neous cre­ation of their first reunion album, The Mag­ic Whip, and its accom­pa­ny­ing tour. To the End splits the dif­fer­ence by cov­er­ing both the unplanned cre­ation of their sec­ond reunion album, The Bal­lad of Dar­ren, and jour­ney towards two giant head­line shows at Wem­b­ley Stadium.

Even for a life­long Blur fan – some­body whose per­son­al and musi­cal tra­jec­to­ries were fun­da­men­tal­ly altered by stum­bling upon a com­pi­la­tion DVD of their music videos at age eight – it’s hard to escape the whiff of cyn­i­cism about it all. Every band-approved doc­u­men­tary func­tions in some way as brand man­age­ment, but the best still find ways to appeal to the non-faith­ful or pro­vide new insight into the music and peo­ple. They cer­tain­ly don’t risk tinging the accom­pa­ny­ing eras with a retroac­tive insin­cer­i­ty like the Blur doc­u­men­tary machine feels on the verge of doing. Is this now a vital part of their process? The only way to force Damon Albarn, Gra­ham Cox­on, Alex James, and Dave Rown­tree to get along for an extend­ed peri­od is with the pres­ence of a cam­era crew?

Even away from that read­ing, there’s not a lot to To the End, espe­cial­ly for any­body who has seen the vast­ly supe­ri­or and more reveal­ing No Dis­tance Left to Run. Direc­tor Toby L, admit­ted­ly lim­it­ed by the band’s tour book­ings, bor­rows that film’s struc­ture of fol­low­ing Blur through ini­tial rehearsals and warm-up dates in towns and loca­tions vital to their ear­ly lega­cy in vignette form before hon­ing in on the big show. Some of these vignettes are mild­ly enter­tain­ing or mov­ing, such as Albarn and Cox­on revis­it­ing the Colch­ester school where they first formed a band and whose music room is now named after them. Yet there’s lit­tle gleaned which hasn’t already been cov­ered elsewhere.

For non-fans, mean­while, every­body seems afraid of air­ing any poten­tial dra­ma. When­ev­er the film begins hint­ing at some sem­blance of con­flict or dan­ger – Albarn using Dar­ren to process a dev­as­tat­ing break-up, recov­er­ing alco­holic James laps­ing back into self-destruc­tive par­ty­ing on tour, Rown­tree injur­ing his knee a week before Wem­b­ley – mem­bers clam up or L and edi­tor Dan­ny Abel just drop the sub­ject. There are brief ges­tures towards the con­tin­ued polit­i­cal rel­e­vance of Blur’s clas­sic mate­r­i­al, a self-aware­ness of each band member’s age (they’re all push­ing 60), and a spo­ken belief that this rep­re­sents ​“the start of some­thing new” which rings mor­bid­ly fun­ny giv­en Albarn’s band-end­ing com­ments at Coachel­la last April. But no angle is explored deeply enough to pro­vide a firm emo­tion­al centre.

By the end, L and Abel out­right reuse footage from ear­li­er in the movie, flail­ing for a sense of nar­ra­tive clo­sure. To the End isn’t unen­ter­tain­ing – Albarn in par­tic­u­lar was born to be a sil­ly grem­lin in front of a cam­era – but it nev­er ade­quate­ly jus­ti­fies its exis­tence even as brand main­te­nance. The upcom­ing Wem­b­ley con­cert film, whose footage here func­tions as a hasti­ly-cut trail­er for the main event, will like­ly func­tion as a more wor­thy epitaph.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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