Grace Notes

 

IT'S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY (B) - If anyone would think to make a documentary about my life -- and don't worry, no one will -- I would hope that two of the main talking heads would not be my mom and an ex whom I treated like crap. Jeff Buckley -- the troubled troubadour who died young, like his father -- suffers that unfortunate indignity in an earnest but somewhat mawkish biography.

 

Director Amy Berg mixes talking heads exuding a noticeable preponderance of feminine energy with often-chaotic image montages that might force you to look away lest you go cross-eyed. The question we post here: Is the super-sensitive Buckley a subject worthy of a full-length documentary? He died at age 30, too young, like his deadbeat dad, the '70s folk singer Tim Buckley, who died a junkie at age 28.

Jeff Buckley had a lot of talent, pouring his heart out into deeply personal lyrics. The women in his life attest here to his earnest attempts to be a good person, but you can read between the lines and appreciate that he could sometimes be an asshole, especially after he became a music-industry darling, signed by Columbia Records and blessed by David Bowie. (Maybe the film could have poked a little deeper with the drummer who quit the band during the tour in support of the debut album, "Grace.") 

As a singer, Buckley could be hit and miss. With jazzy stylings, he aimed for Nina Simone but occasionally landed on Liza Minnelli. (To be fair, he had an admirer in Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, whose Qawwali style Buckley liked to imitate.) To his credit, Buckley honed his craft in small clubs, toiling away on more than just his name. In the end, though, he managed only one proper studio album, with a second pieced-together after his death. His version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is considered to be definitive.

Berg's hectic biography strives too hard to add depth to Buckley's resume. After reporting on his suspicious drowning (it is insisted that it was accidental, but why was he wearing his clothes, and why did he phone many of his loved ones in the days before that?), she wrings maximum emotion out of the final answering-machine message he left for his mother, a bit of a drama queen who cries on cue on camera. In the end, it is difficult to accept that all of this attention on Buckley is earned 28 years after his death. 

THELONIOUS MONK: STRAIGHT, NO CHASER (1989) (A-minus) - This is a fascinating curation of footage that took many years, and a late boost from executive producer Clint Eastwood, to bring to fruition, seeing the light only after the bebop piano pioneer had died. It is made up mainly of footage from a 1967 public TV documentary that never aired outside of Germany.

Monk certainly is a curious subject. The footage from the late '60s and early '70s delves, in fly-on-the-wall style, into quiet personal moments to go with generous clips of performances. Talking heads gathered in the '80s -- including his old colleagues and his son -- attest to his genius but they don't shy away from discussing his personal problems. (Monk was possibly an undiagnosed schizophrenic or suffering from bipolar disorder.) His mental health issues are clearly evident; we see examples of him randomly rise from his piano bench and wander the stage. Off-stage he is barely verbal, apparently heavily medicated. 

His talents -- on full display -- are sui generis. I'm no jazz aficionado, but I can appreciate his sophisticated compositions (beyond the standard "'Round Midnight") and his staccato keyboard technique. Some of his former collaborates reunite at times to reinterpret some of his well-known compositions. But it's the old footage -- worshiped by jazz fanatics -- that can be riveting at times. 

This is all assembled by Maysles veteran Charlotte Zwerin ("Gimme Shelter," "Salesman"). She is not shy about exploring Monk's complicated personal life -- he stayed married to his devoted wife Nellie, but he spent just as much time, in his later years, with Rothschild family scion Pannonica "Nica" de Koenigswarter, who often housed him at her New Jersey waterfront home. That place had a piano prominently displayed but rarely if ever played in Monk's final years.

BONUS TRACKS 

My favorite Buckley song landed on my radar courtesy of a younger ex who fell hard for his catalog in the '00s, the Leonard Cohen knockoff "Jewel Box":

 

We previously linked to Thelonious Monk's version of "Just a Gigolo." Here he is in a clip from Denmark, performing Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields' "Don't Blame Me":

 

The on-point "Monk's Mood":