Of 29 In the years since his accidental drowning, Jeff Buckley’s life has been made easy .‘A n’roll legend: a sad, sensitive artist who will die young like his cult singer father. Amy J. Berg’s film – the first feature documentary on Buckley – aims to explode this myth. Using interviews with friends and collaborators alongside a rich trove of archival footage, Berg reveals Buckley’s complex personality, and goes some way to arguing his music as powerful and experimental.
We meet Buckley as a child being raised by his mother in Southern California, already abandoned by his father, folk singer Tim Buckley, who died of an alcohol overdose when Buckley was eight years old. After spending his teenage years in bands, Buckley is invited to perform at 1991 tribute to his father in New York. Although he was reluctant to join Tim (“he decided not to be a father to me”) this performance introduced him to the avant-garde scene where his art flourished; context that is often overlooked.
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Along with his famous performances at New York’s Sin‑é club – where he auditioned for Columbia Records – he is involved in underground theater with his girlfriend, Rebecca Moore. Moore and another former partner, singer Joan Wasser, are the most important voices in the film, painting a picture of a complex and fascinating man – Wasser’s description of Buckley locking eyes with him when he first saw him sing is heartbreakingly captivating. Berg precedes the feminine in Buckley’s story, placing him next to the sexual performances of the likes of Michael Stipe and Kurt Cobain. She emphasizes Nina Simone’s influence on her voice, including stories of her dressing up at home, and charts her struggle with her record company when she wears a gold jacket on her cover. 1994 the album .‘grace’ – very androgynous, apparently.
Most of the time is given .‘Grace’, Buckley’s only studio album, with great footage from the recording. It’s refreshing to see the album so radically remastered – talking about his ubiquitous cover of Leonard Cohen. .‘Hallelujah’, Buckley (rightly) says that .“it’s honoring the orgasm, not the god.” At the time of his death 1997Buckley was working on his second album, .‘My love The Drunk’, released posthumously as a series of full band recordings and homemade demos. This was one of Buckley’s best, weirdest pieces of music, and although most of it is used throughout the film, we’re told nothing of its making, and we’ve been lied to as to how it was recorded. This is a missed opportunity in a film that often succeeds in expanding the scope of Buckley’s story.
Instead, the end of the film is given over to a discussion of Buckley’s mental health, particularly his bipolar disorder which allegedly worsened due to the pressures of fame. According to Wasser, his brain was like that .“a radio tuned to all frequencies at the same time” – a sometimes fruitful, sometimes painful situation that is sensitively reflected in Berg’s collage-like filmmaking. Berg understands his subject well, but perhaps Buckley is too complex to be fully represented in one film.
