​Berg lights a candle: ‘It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley’

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

There are so many memorable moments in the short life of musician Jeff Buckley that filmmaker Amy J. Berg could easily have gotten lost in an endless highlight reel. The veteran documentarian, whose feature debut “Deliver Us From Evil” (2006) received an Oscar nomination, focuses instead on the core relationships in her fascinating subject’s orbit, constructing a detailed portrait that will satisfy longtime fans and make believers out of the previously uninitiated. In “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” (the title a reference to “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over,” one of several masterworks from Buckley’s first and only studio album) Berg recognizes and honors the artist’s communion with the feminine by placing a trio of women at the heart of the film.

Berg reports that she pursued Buckley’s mother Mary Guibert for close to twenty years. And I trust Guibert knows that she made the right decision to finally accept Berg into her life and agree to sit for on-camera interviews and open up her personal archive, for the result is as moving and personal as any narrative, in fiction or lived reality, concerning the iron bond between a single mom and her child. Guibert, a first-generation immigrant, met Tim Buckley in a high school French class not far from the gates of Disneyland in Anaheim, California. And even though Guibert speaks fondly of the unique and electric connection she felt with the pre-fame singer-songwriter, she refuses to sugarcoat the pain that radiated from Tim’s decision to have no part in raising Jeff.

Even so, the shadow of Tim Buckley, who died of a heroin overdose at the age of 28, looms large throughout the young life of his gifted son. Their paths would cross for just the briefest flicker of time in 1975 when Jeff was 8 years old. Berg handles the younger Buckley’s confusion and yearning, along with Mary’s trepidation and skepticism, with a potent shot of the matchbook cover on which Tim wrote down his phone number for his estranged kid only a couple weeks before he would be dead. Later, as Jeff put in the work to sharpen his own prodigious talent, the desire to avoid direct comparisons to Tim comes to a head before Jeff’s decision to accept producer Hal Willner’s invitation to perform at the “Greetings From Tim Buckley” tribute show in 1991.

Along with Guibert, artists Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser offer exacting insights. Berg limits the total number of interview subjects to a carefully chosen handful, including Michael Tighe, Ben Harper, Aimee Mann, and Matt Johnson, but the director capitalizes on the many ways that the close partnerships Buckley enjoyed with Moore and Wasser influenced his music. Of course, Guibert undoubtedly helped cultivate Jeff’s ear by exposing him to all kinds of incredible recordings. We get a crystal understanding of exactly how Buckley would aspire to be like Nina Simone and Judy Garland as much as Robert Plant (and unless you are made of stone, have tissues ready when Wasser recounts a meeting between Jeff and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan).

Berg also spends just the right amount of time unpacking the transcendence of Buckley’s most-played recording: the phenomenal cover of “Hallelujah” that would mark Leonard Cohen’s original with the same kind of indelible stamp made by Sinead O’Connor’s version of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Johnny Cash’s take on “Hurt” and Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “All Along the Watchtower.” From beginning to end, Berg reveals herself as a genuine admirer and scholar, evidenced in part by the fulfilling title, which in most other iterations of the multiverse would have used some variation of “Grace.” On my way in to see the film, my friend Nicole commented, “We know how it ends.” But like thousands of others, we will never stop listening.