{"id":1977,"date":"2025-09-27T22:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T02:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/?p=1977"},"modified":"2025-09-27T22:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T02:02:08","slug":"its-never-over-it-is-so-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/2025\/09\/27\/its-never-over-it-is-so-over\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Never Over: It is SO Over"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s Never Over<\/em>, the Jeff Buckley documentary, is unfortunately a perfect example of how to make a film about a fascinating artist feel\u2026not fascinating at all. For a story as layered and complex as Buckley\u2019s, this documentary skimmed the surface like a flat stone across water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first problem is straightforward: if you\u2019re going to interview close family and friends, you need to offer viewers something new. Instead, the conversations added little beyond vague \u201che was talented and special\u201d platitudes. We already knew that. Where was the insight? The deeper context? The substance that makes a documentary worth watching?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make things worse, some of the most important parts of Buckley\u2019s story were almost completely ignored. The controversy around \u201cForget Her\u201d being forced onto Grace<\/em> never arose. His \u201cpunk phase\u201d\u2014a whole chapter of his life that shows the variety of his artistry\u2014was reduced to a blink-and-you-miss-it two-second clip. It felt like the filmmakers were more interested in hitting the internet bullet points than exploring Buckley\u2019s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there was the music. Or rather, the same<\/em> music. The documentary cycled through the same five songs on repeat as if Buckley only recorded a handful of tracks in his career. For someone who left behind such a varied and emotional body of work, it\u2019s baffling that the documentary about his life felt like a broken record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visually, things weren\u2019t much better. The graphics might have been considered cutting-edge if this premiered at a film festival in 2014 and had been submitted by a particularly ambitious 15-year-old. Instead, in 2025, it came off as dated and uninspired. I half expected an editor\u2019s watermark to pop up in the corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The advertised \u201cunseen footage\u201d also turned out to be a bait-and-switch. Yes, there were clips we hadn\u2019t seen before, but they boiled down to long stretches of Buckley singing. Don\u2019t get me wrong, his voice was wonderful\u2014it could carry nearly anything\u2014but the recordings themselves were low quality, poorly edited, and unnecessarily long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite these challenges, nothing was as disappointing as how the film breezed over the making of Grace<\/em>. The documentary practically suggested he sang a few covers at some gigs, played his father\u2019s tribute show, and just like that, an iconic album was born. No real exploration of the creative process, no nuance\u2014just a quick overview and nothing more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, It\u2019s Never Over<\/em> managed to make a film about Jeff Buckley feel oddly empty. A story brimming with passion, music, and heartbreak was stripped down to the most obvious beats, leaving audiences with something that felt less like a tribute and more like a high school project.For a film that claimed to celebrate an artist who hated being boxed in, It\u2019s Never Over<\/em> did exactly that: put Jeff Buckley in a box, sealed it shut, and replayed the same five songs until the credits rolled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Never Over, the Jeff Buckley documentary, is unfortunately a perfect example of how to make a film about a fascinating artist feel\u2026not fascinating at all. For a story as layered and complex as Buckley\u2019s, this documentary skimmed the surface like a flat stone across water. The first problem is straightforward: if you\u2019re going to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":1978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[35,27,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1979,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977\/revisions\/1979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}