SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL: Greetings from Tim Buckley could be seen as misleading title for this telemovie-like biopic, given that it’s more about the late singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley than his comparably gifted father, Tim, whose fans will recognise the moniker as a nod to one of his father’s most well known albums, Greetings from LA. While Buckley Snr. does make a few appearances, mostly in a handful of unsatisfactory flashbacks, this is Jeff Buckley’s story. Or, at least, part of it.
The film’s major assets are its two leads
Instead of trying to cover a lot of biographical ground, the film wisely focuses on a small but significant moment in the younger performer’s brief life. In 1991, when most of the film is set, Jeff (embodied convincingly by Penn Badgley) was a troubled youth, still two years away from recording his critically and commercially successful first album, Grace – destined, of course, to be his only official release before his mysterious 1997 death by drowning.
As the film opens, Jeff receives a call inviting him to take part in a musical tribute to Buckley Snr., who had died from an overdose in 1975, to be staged in a New York church. Persuaded to come along to rehearsal despite his initial response of 'Sorry, I don’t know my father," he spends a lot of time suffering comments about his physical resemblance to dear old dad. Given that Tim pretty much abandoned him and his mother when he was in the cot, and they only ever met once, this seems good reason to walk around in a James Dean-like cloud of angst.
No surprise then that Jeff is soon playing hooky with a charming production assistant (Britain’s Imogen Poots, adapting an impeccable American accent) who is either smitten with him or his connection to his famous father – he finds it hard to tell.
In examining two famous people that everyone usually brackets together but who didn’t know each other, this film, at least in theory, marks an ambitious deviation from the standard rock biopic template. But while writer-director Daniel Algrant and his screenwriting partners, David Brendel and Emma Sheanshang, offer some insight into Jeff Buckley’s psyche, they never satisfactorily resolve the central structural issue to make this work as a dramatically convincing screenplay.
The flashbacks, instead of lightly sketching in the older singer’s backstory, run through the picture’s first half as an over-extended parallel story about Tim Buckley on the road with one of his girlfriends – playing folk clubs, watching the great jazz musician Charlie Mingus perform, et al. Dramatically, much of this is dubious, and the use of a bloodlessly anonymous singer to dub Buckley père’s singing voice will make those who don’t know his music wonder why all the fuss.
The film’s major assets are its two leads, who give what deserve to be seen as breakout performances. Poots radiates plentiful intelligence and easy charm, and Badgeley brings surprising charisma to a guy easily dismissed as a pain in the arse. He dives into Jeff’s self-obsession with method-like commitment while presenting a more than passable stab at the man’s extraordinary singing voice. A scene where he offers an impromptu impersonation of Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant in a record shop is bang on the nail, and the same goes for the lengthy musical climax where Jeff finally finds his confidence and shines as a performer (with the clear implication this is where his musical career really began).
Presumably for copyright reasons, there’s only a smidgeon of Jeff Buckley’s music in the film – a guitar extract from one of the Grace songs (which, intriguingly, he’s depicted being taught by guitarist Gary Lucas). Tim Buckley’s most celebrated tune, 'Song to the Siren', features early on, though not in its original version or the popular 1980s This Mortal Coil cover.
