“Without ordinary life, there is no art,” says Jeff Buckley in the great new documentary about him from Amy Berg, “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley.” The problem is that nothing was ordinary about the man who launched into music history with arguably the best debut album of all time in Grace. Instantly placed on a pedestal with musical peers that he strived to impress, Buckley could never quite find the “ordinary.” The strength of Berg’s film comes from how much she endeavors to locate it for him, focusing on the people who truly loved and admired Buckley more than anything else. It’s a deeply personal film, a life story told by the people who knew and loved Jeff. It hums with the emotion and vibrancy of Buckley’s music. As much as he hated the spotlight—there are very funny sections in the film about how he responded to being named one of People’s “Most Beautiful People”—I think he would have admired this movie. In fact, it probably would have made him cry.
Berg details the building blocks of Buckley’s artistry and personality in early scenes, showing how he initially sought to emulate his famous father, Tim, and then refused to be defined by him. One almost gets the sense that if Tim had embraced his son at all—he only really spent any time with him once, breaking his young heart by ignoring him thereafter—or even if he had lived, that Jeff wouldn’t have turned quite the same way. He was intent on carving his own path outside of the Buckley legacy, embracing his single mother with both arms while simultaneously pushing away anything related to his father.
And carve he did. While Berg’s film emphasizes personal connections to Jeff, it doesn’t ignore his craft. He was a friend to Chris Cornell and an inspiration to Thom Yorke, who reportedly went home and wrote “Fake Plastic Trees” after seeing Buckley in concert. He got to meet and even sing for some of the people who inspired him, including Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Robert Plant. None other than David Bowie named Grace the best debut album of all time. Anyone who has ever had even a dose of Imposter Syndrome has to wonder how that felt in Jeff’s mid-twenties. And the pressure to produce a worthy follow-up to an album as beloved as Grace is a central part of the documentary.
There are times when I wanted “It’s Never Over” to slow down. The footage of Buckley singing at Sin-e, the small coffee shop that became a go-to destination because of his performances, is breathtaking. (Go and listen to the Legacy Edition of Live at Sin-e, which is just hours of such material. It’s like hearing a genius emerging from the clay.) There are times when Berg clutters her material with a bit too much animation, layering words on the screen when Jeff’s voice conveys them emotionally enough. It’s a relatively straightforward cradle-to-grave documentary, but it pulses with so much heartfelt adoration for its subject that the impact still lands. In that sense, it’s kind of like Jeff’s music—familiar in structure but coursing with emotion.
Still, it’s the bio-doc traps that she avoids that matter more. Most of all, she focuses intently on the people who actually knew Jeff, especially his mother and girlfriends, thereby avoiding the trope of anecdotes about the cost of genius from those who barely knew him. These are the people forever changed by the man who sang “but it’s over” in “Last Goodbye.” For these people, it clearly never will be. That’s how things like love, grief, and even influence work. They’re never-ending.
