Peter Lonsdale finds the chords of classic rock in Garth Jenning's latest offering.
How can an art-pop band avoid becoming its own tribute act, especially as the group in question nears pensionable age? Nostalgia tours, fetishised physical media, and dad-rock festivals are no longer a phase but a fixture. How, then, does a band like Pulp, which started out in 1978, keep things fresh? These are the questions posed and euphorically answered by the latest in a string of documentaries, shorts, and concerts by the band.
Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? tracks the titular band's triumphant 2025 shows at London’s O2 Arena. More than a plug-in-and-play ensemble, Pulp have always incorporated film, narrative, cultural commentary, and a general aesthetic vision as part of their tours. Anyone who attended the Dublin 3Arena date earlier that week will know that calling it a mere ‘gig’ would undersell the performance, given the staging, live orchestral arrangements, and bravura visual production. MUBI, the film’s exclusive streaming home, compares it to Jonathan Demme’s seminal Talking Heads concert movie Stop Making Sense (1984) and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz (1978). In the canon of concert features, that’s a high bar to set.
The movie opens with singer Jarvis Cocker talking with Garth Jennings about what we are about to watch. Jennings’ personal connection to Pulp is gently established from the outset: he studied film alongside Jarvis Cocker at St Martin’s School of Art in London and has previously directed music videos for the band. Intercut throughout the live material, archival footage and interviews reveal the gawky beginnings, the main players, the highs, the hiatuses, the new material, and the future. Surprisingly, it is the concert rather than the documentary that proves most compelling; the latter sticks to familiar origin stories for anyone acquainted with ’90s culture.
Editor Barney Pilling (The Grand Budapest Hotel) seamlessly weaves the two threads into a sustained performance of its own, showcasing the high production values and choreography of the stage show. Indeed, the mixed-media nature of the art is the ultimate product: Cocker’s voiceover describes it as a “visual jumble sale”, reminiscent of the old dictum about editing that cutting from one image to another creates a third concept. Here, the archival material, filmic bric-a-brac (there’s a Wilhelm scream knowingly thrown in), and vintage kitsch combine with the dazzling, high-tech modern performance to create a cultural and personal history. The whole film is a coup of vaulting ambition: don’t look for any stale Britpop nostalgia. There’s none here.
The show begins and ends with a red curtain, a nod to the dramaturgical vision behind the set and on-stage screens. This becomes more defined towards the end of the concert, when the screens, orchestra, and lightshow are briefly packed away to reveal the four ordinary men and women behind it all. The band pay tribute to Steve Mackey, their long-time bassist who died in 2023, with a rendition of “Something Changed”: one of their most popular and powerful songs about how chance meetings change lives forever. This is where Jennings shows his chops as a director, having helmed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) and the Sing franchise (which grossed over $1.04 billion). The surviving band members simply perform, without any visual or technical wizardry, while clips of all five members throughout the years play onscreen.
This is where the film really succeeds: in rendering the band as a band, rather than Jarvis and the Pulps, a perennial danger given the national treasure status enjoyed by the frontman. Similarly, production designer Douglas Green presents each song as a separate visual performance, drawing on Pulp’s own history without simply recreating it. The staircase that opens the show recalls the band’s iconic 1995 Brixton show; imagery incorporates Rankin photographs from the same era alongside a photograph of an Icelandic mountain range taken by Jarvis Cocker. These analogue artefacts are animated with AI enhancements and real-time digital processing.
Will it become a classic of the concert movie genre? It’s too early to say. It’s certainly a moving and narratively satisfying experience; one that rewards watching as a whole, rather than skipping to the greatest hits. And no doubt it will add to MUBI’s campaign to rival A24 and Neon for the title of indie player with the most momentum and street cred. And what, ultimately, does a band like this do for an encore? Jarvis tells us that “the story of Pulp is not over.” 48 years into their career, the curtain is yet to fall.
Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? is available to stream on MUBI from 25th September 2026.
