In 1978, a 15-year-old student at a comprehensive school in Sheffield wrote a mission statement in the back of an exercise book. The student, Jarvis Cocker, had recently formed a band with classmates who, like him, weren’t selected first for sports. This early vision would eventually lead to the creation of Pulp, a band that would become one of the most iconic in British music history. In 2023, after a decade-long break, Pulp resumed touring, and in 2022, they played to 20,000 people each night at London’s O2 arena. A new film captures concert footage from those shows, featuring Cocker, now in his 60s, performing his hit art-pop songs with most of the original band and a 10-piece string section. The film weaves together concert footage with personal reflections, nostalgic archival clips, interviews with Cocker’s mother and grandmother, and his own narration, tracing his journey from that teenage dreamer to the present day. The film blends exuberance and celebration with a bittersweet sense of reflection. In voiceover, Cocker notes that songs "contain pockets of energy from your past life that’s released again when you perform them." Watching the performances, it's clear that many of Pulp’s lyrics were about young people questioning what life would be like in the future. For example, the lyrics "Let’s all meet up in the year 2000/Won’t it be strange when we’re all fully grown?" reflect the uncertainty of making the right choices in youth. It is ironic that Cocker, now a national treasure, became the patron saint of outsiders — people he described as "misshapes, mistakes, misfits / Raised on a diet of broken biscuits." He seems a little bemused by his status, yet he always understood the power of pop music to transform even the most awkward teenager into a symbol of cool. Even at the height of their popularity during the Britpop era, Pulp remained outsiders. There’s a clip of Cocker playing in a charity football tournament in 1996 alongside more traditionally "laddish" musicians like Liam Gallagher, Damon Albarn, and Robbie Williams. While he enjoyed being in the starting XI for a moment, the footage suggests he was more at home on the sidelines, observing rather than participating. Much of the 1990s footage implies that achieving everything he had ever dreamed of in his youth felt like an anticlimactic trauma — one from which he has only recently recovered. In the film’s present day, Pulp’s first album in 24 years has reached No. 1, and the concert opens with a song from it, Spike Island, with its defiant line, "I was born to perform … I exist to do this." The gigs, now Pulp’s 566th and 567th live shows, suggest there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be many more. While the documentary’s biographical and archival elements are droll, heartfelt, and uniquely Cocker, the concert footage feels somewhat distant. The O2 arena, known for its massive scale and corporate feel, may have dulled the energy of the performances, and the cameras seem too far away to capture the intimacy of the music. While the audience appears to be enjoying themselves, the energy of the live experience doesn’t quite translate to the screen. Pulp thrived because they spoke directly to their audience — and in this film, that connection feels just out of reach.