Moving Behind-the-Music Doc Illuminates a Life Cut Short

At one point in singer-songwriter Jeff Buckely’s promising career, the musician exclaimed on MTV that he sees himself as a parasite in an industry he’s long admired. Not quite a household name in the United States, the Southern California native found an immense following in Europe and other countries that seemed to gravitate towards his unique sound developed while playing in New York nightclubs in his early 20s. At a time in the 1990s when grunge music became popular, Jeff Buckley’s eclectic brand and distinctive voice was cut short when he drowned in Memphis at the tender age of 30.

Much has been written about the musician who only gave the world one studio album, “Grace.” Often regarded for his covers of previously well-known songs, Buckley is best remembered for his take on the Leonard Cohen hit, “Hallelujah,” notable for Buckley’s interpretation of the song as more sexually based than gospel hymn. Attempting to distance himself from his biological father, singer Tim Buckley, the emotional depth that Jeff brought to his music is explored in great detail in the new Sundance documentary, “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley.”

Director Amy Berg’s “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” reveals itself as a straightforward documentary, complete with interviews from Columbia music executives, Jeff Buckley’s mom, his ex-girlfriends, friends, contemporaries, and those who knew him best. The film includes archival footage of Alanis Morissette disclosing her appreciation for Buckley’s music and pull quotes from actor Brad Pitt and fellow icon David Bowie sharing that “Grace” is the best album in music history. These interviews and musings are touchstones that provide color to Buckley’s life and influence on other artists, but it’s footage of the man himself that lets the audience in on what makes a man like him tick.

As friend and fellow singer Aimee Mann says at one point in the film, “He has a boundaryless, liquid quality.”

Berg’s fascination with Buckley’s octave range and tumultuous past makes for an electric documentary that harkens back to an era of opposition in the face of pop music. Raised by a teenaged single mother, Buckley’s estranged father, Tim, was a moderately successful singer in his own right but died of a drug overdose early in life. Rather than looking up to his father in a musical sense, the younger Buckley was instead heavily influenced by other artists with seemingly no connection to one another: Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, the Smiths, Led Zeppelin and Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

But fate has a tricky way of catching up with a burgeoning artist, especially one who repeatedly foretold his future demise to his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca (also another major influence in his songwriting). Berg captures Buckley’s fraught relationship with his own mortality, as the singer became irritated with those he admired in the music industry who suddenly admired him back. The idea that the influences in his life were influenced by his work was too much for Buckley to take in, and Berg does a remarkable job of demonstrating the psychological break the musician had toward the tail end of his life as a result.

“It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” doesn’t reinvent the documentary genre, but it does offer a unique perspective on the varying music of the 1990s, an experimental time where lonely artists like Buckley could buck the system and create a new brand of music under the guise of major labels like Columbia.

Sometimes, when a person flies too close to the sun of fame, it’s possible they fall into trouble with drugs and alcohol, a cliche to which Buckley himself was not immune. But his life and career aren’t defined by the extracurricular activities that made him difficult to work with, nor does his untimely death define it.

Rather, it’s the music that lives on.

The post ‘It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley’ Review: Moving Behind-the-Music Doc Illuminates a Life Cut Short appeared first on TheWrap.