It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley
A Review by Ava Bellows
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley
A review
by Ava Bellows
Like so many wordy, overfeeling girls, I’ve always loved Jeff Buckley. I loved him before I knew him—before I knew his story, his history, the short arc of his life. I can still see myself in the passenger seat of my dad’s car, hearing his rendition of “Hallelujah” for the first time. That voice didn’t just arrive in my ears; it dropped straight into my bones. There are moments in life when you recognize something on a level deeper than thought, when you feel the truth before you can name it. That was Jeff for me. Not just a singer. Not just a song. A soul.
As I grew up, Jeff came along. I learned the details: the music, the relationships, the sudden end. And I kept loving him, the way you love an artist who feels like an invisible companion—one who somehow makes your own life make more sense.
Jeff Buckley in IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo credit: Merri Cyr. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Amy J. Berg’s It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley is a rare thing: a documentary that doesn’t try to turn him into a marble statue. It’s stunning, yes, and often crushing, but more than anything, it’s deeply human. It’s a portrait that listens for the heartbeat behind the voice. And unlike so many music documentaries about men, this one gives full, unhurried attention to the women in his life—not as side characters or symbols, but as people with their own creative gravity.
Jeff Buckley and Mary Guibert in IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Foremost among them is his mother, Mary Guibert, whose presence feels like the axis of the film. She opens a door into their relationship, and suddenly Jeff isn’t the spectral figure we all carry in our heads—he’s a boy, a son, a friend. We hear his voicemails to her over the years: casual, funny, tender. “Jeff and I sort of raised each other,” she says. And the way she says it makes you understand that this is not a metaphor.
Jeff Buckley and Mary Guibert in IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
The film resists the easy lure of celebrity testimonials. Instead, it lets Rebecca Moore—the presumed muse of “It’s Never Over”—and Joan Wasser, inspiration for “Everybody Here Wants You,” speak for themselves. They aren’t flattened into the old clichés of muse, girlfriend, ex. Moore addresses this head-on: “Society has a weird view towards women in these relationships.… There’s so much misogyny… You’re pigeonholed into this sort of girlfriend or ex-girlfriend.… You’re these roles and you’re cut as a pathetic figure.” In this film, those roles are dismantled. These women are given the same respect Jeff himself gave them—as artists, as equals.
It’s the kind of framing he would have wanted.
There is concert footage here so intimate you feel the air in the room. The sweat, the laughter between notes, the kind of glances that pass between a performer and the audience when the music is hitting its exact mark. “Intimate” almost feels too clinical for what this is—it’s more like being given a memory you didn’t know you had.
The documentary doesn’t shy away from the end. It addresses the Mississippi River, the unanswered questions, the way his life seemed to fold suddenly in on itself. It also faces his own words about mortality—when asked where he’d be in ten years, Jeff replied, “I don’t see myself ten years from now.” But Berg refuses to turn him into a tragic hero, the doomed poet archetype he so easily could have been cast as. Instead, she shows us a man with an appetite for life, a sprawling emotional range, and a generosity of spirit that keeps reverberating long after the voice has gone silent.
Jeff Buckley in IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo credit: Dana Tynan. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley is not about canonizing Jeff. It’s about loving him the way those who knew him did—fiercely, completely, with clear eyes. It’s about pulling him out from under the weight of myth and giving us back the man. Watching it feels less like being told a story and more like being invited into a living room, handed a stack of old photographs, and asked to stay awhile.
And you do. Because when you love Jeff Buckley, it’s never really over.
WATCH TRAILER
IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY
DIRECTED BY AMY BERG
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