A young man stands with a microphone and a guitar in a dimly lit church. His clothes are black and his hair is shaggy, falling onto his shoulders and into his eyes. In front of him, there are pews full of people; behind him, the glow of stained glass, the illuminated image of Jesus in rich blues and reds. When the young man opens his mouth and breaks into the first verse of Tim Buckley’s “I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain,” everyone sits up a little straighter. World: Meet Jeff Buckley.

It’s 1991 at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, N.Y. The crowds are there for a concert in memory of the American singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, primarily known for the folk rock he released in the 1960s and ’70s. Jeff Buckley, there to sing for a dead father that he hardly knew, looks a whole lot like Tim but sounds like nothing anyone has ever heard: raw, effortless, beautiful.

In the new documentary “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley,” available for streaming on YouTube and Amazon Prime Video, this memorial concert is framed as a singularly pivotal moment in Jeff Buckley’s life. The documentary was produced and directed by Amy Berg, with Mary Guibert (Jeff Buckley’s mother), Brad Pitt and Alison Raykovich serving as executive producers. The film tracks the entirety of Jeff Buckley’s life, beginning with his childhood and the dueling influence of his two parental relationships: The love and affection of his mother is positioned against the abandonment of his father when Jeff was only a few months old.

This memorial concert, titled “Greetings from Tim Buckley,” marked Jeff’s public debut as a musician, exposing him to influential characters in the music industry and prompting him to move to New York full time to pursue his art. The concert is also where he met Rebecca Moore, the actor and musician who would become his girlfriend and eventually his muse for much of his 1994 album “Grace.”

Moore is featured heavily in the documentary, alongside Jeff’s mother Mary, his musician ex-girlfriend Joan Wasser and his bandmates and musical collaborators. Together they tell the story of Jeff Buckley’s life and career, their testimonies interwoven with photos and footage of live musical performances. To see Jeff’s friends and mother on camera is to be reminded of the harsh reality of his short life; because he died at the age of 30, his peers are still middle-aged nearly three decades after his death.

Much of the documentary focuses on the creation and success of “Grace,” Jeff’s only completed studio album. The album was not a major commercial success when it first came out, though it received critical acclaim, especially from other musicians. David Bowie said that he thought it was one of the best albums he had ever heard, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke said he immediately wrote “Fake Plastic Trees” after hearing Jeff Buckley perform live.

In the decades since his death, “Grace” has become particularly beloved for Jeff’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” In the documentary, Jeff’s vocal abilities are compared to those of Robert Plant and Nina Simone, and on “Hallelujah” his talent truly shines: Jeff’s string of wails at the end of the song bring the track to new heights of emotional intensity.

Though Buckley’s mother was a devout Catholic, Jeff did not practice as an adult. Yet the influence of religion is evident in his music, which, if not explicitly about God, is steeped in a profound sense of yearning that reflects a deep-seated spirituality. His rendition of “Hallelujah” is an excellent example of this; though it is a song about a complex human relationship, there is something almost prayerful about the struggle with desire and doubt the song conveys—not to mention the allusions to the biblical stories of King David and Bathsheba and of Samson and Delilah that shape the song’s narrative.

This seems to be what Jeff Buckley was best at: identifying human experiences and making them feel otherworldly by exploring their power over us. He did this exceptionally well in “Lover You Should’ve Come Over,” a song likely written about Moore in the aftermath of their breakup. The track’s profession of love and loss is so extreme that it is almost painful to listen to: “It’s never over,” he sings, inspiring the title of the documentary, “She is the tear that hangs inside my soul forever.”

There are other more explicit religious references throughout “Grace” as well. Another cover, “Corpus Christi Carol,” is Jeff’s rendition of a 16th century hymn that uses an allegory of a knight to tell the story of the death of Jesus. Jeff sings it like a meditation or an eerie lullaby.

There are moments where the documentary adopts a religious tone when talking about Buckley himself. The film attempts to identify some of Jeff’s flaws, particularly in regard to his (in)ability to balance his music with other aspects of his life, including his romantic relationships and the demands of the music industry. (He seems to have hated the pressure to make money off his music.)

Yet many of the recollections shared by friends and loved ones are steeped in a hazy nostalgia that make it hard to imagine that Jeff Buckley ever really walked the Earth. In all the stories told and tapes played, Jeff is ever ethereal and enigmatic. We watch him as he rides the subway to the last stop and back again with Moore on the night they met, performs at Sin-é Café in the East Village to intimate crowds and dramatically spars with Columbia Records executives for artistic control over his music.

This romanticizing effect is deepened by Berg’s filmmaking approach, which mixes tapes and photographs of Jeff with abstract graphics (images of space, shapes twisting and spinning, colorful masses growing and shrinking) and illustrations—many of which are animated versions of cartoon images that Jeff drew himself. Jeff himself begins to feel more like a character than a real person.

Jeff Buckley died on May 29, 1997, at the age of 30. As the documentary explains, Jeff waded into Wolf River Harbor in Memphis, Tenn., fully clothed and seemingly unprompted. He left his friend Keith Foti waiting on the shoreline and drowned before he could be pulled out of the waves caused by a passing boat.

Those featured in the documentary do not explicitly identify specific mental health or substance abuse issues that may have been plaguing Jeff (he is said to have had a blood alcohol level equivalent to less than one beer when he died). Instead they talk broadly about the impending doom that Buckley seemed to experience in the weeks and days leading up to his death. There are references to melancholic phone calls Jeff made to friends and past lovers, to comments Jeff made about the demons and darkness within himself, and to Jeff’s desire to look at old photographs and reflect on memories.

While these moments are touching acts of memory, they also feel deeply unsettling. Rather than clarify the circumstances of his death, the documentary shrouds it more deeply in mystery.

Perhaps this should not be surprising, given that a lack of resolution seems to be the name of the game when it comes to the memory of Jeff Buckley. It’s clear that all who knew and loved him have never fully moved on—not his ex-girlfriends, and certainly not his mother, who we watch replay a 30-year-old voicemail from her son at the end of the film.

I’ll admit that this feels fitting, given that so much of Jeff’s music centered around his own unyielding desire, his unshakable inner turmoil. In the wake of his death, this restlessness seems to have been passed on to all of us. When it comes to Jeff Buckley, we are as stuck as he always seemed to be—unable to move on, let go or say goodbye.

“It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” is available for rent on Prime and Apple TV. It begins streaming on HBO Max on Dec. 4.

Brigid McCabe is an O'Hare Fellow at America Media.