Skip to main content

One Love Celebrates the Icon of Bob Marley Without Looking Curiously at the Person


One of the underlying functions of any biopic ostensibly, is that it be an educational tool as well as a work of entertainment. It’s not the primary purpose obviously, and fiction movies have no obligation to be documentaries; but it’s understood that even with liberties taken, a biographical picture would be where you could at least learn some new facts about the subject. I don’t know much about the life and career of Bob Marley, and Bob Marley: One Love barely changes that.
It’s a movie that is happy to broadly allude to the political turmoil in Jamaica that resulted in an assassination attempt on Marley in 1976, a subsequent European tour that ended with his cancer diagnosis and return to his homeland, but it explores as little as possible the specific contexts pertaining to these; and as for Marley himself, while it engages in abstract glimpses of his childhood and introduction to and subsequent embrace of Rastafari spirituality, very little sense is actually communicated of his views and off-stage personality.
Bob Marley: One Love, which is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green of King Richard, has producer credits for several members of Marley’s family, including his widow Rita (played in the film by Lashana Lynch), a successful and talented musician in her own right. And this may answer for the specific lack of specificity in the portrayal of their patriarch -much like the non-Freddie Mercury members of Queen were depicted in the safest most boring ways possible in Bohemian Rhapsody. One Love doesn’t go quite that far -Marley is not ever a dull figure, perhaps due in part to the surprisingly good performance of Kingsley Ben-Adir.
Like most of the cast, Ben-Adir is British and doesn’t look much like the legendary reggae singer, yet he captures very well the performance style, body language, and the general groovy spirit of the guy. The way he composes himself, interacts with others in a laid-back way that nonetheless reinforces his confidence and authority -even his singing is quite impressive. Lynch is pretty good too, even as her role is naturally sidelined to that typical of the spouse in these musician biopics -broadly supportive outside of one obligatory scene where she must challenge her husband.
Customarily, this might be bent around drug use or some similar major vice, but it is one thing this film is free of. Marley and his band get high -don’t get me wrong- but never is it presented as a problem, it’s just part of his character. And maybe it’s another effect of the film’s closeness to the Marley family, his main struggle is simply against his own symbol and that vague philosophy of spreading joy and freedom. But as platitudes, these don’t mean much of anything, and the movie’s refusal to address any aspect of both Marley’s politics and the specificity of the issues facing Jamaica -beyond simply deep partisan divides and heavy gang activity- does a disservice to his activism and condescends to the audience. Worse, it presents both him and his Rastafari philosophy in a broadly apolitical light, which was absolutely not the reality. Post-movie montage shows footage of the real Marley on stage brokering a peace between two rival political leaders -neither of whom appears in the movie with any kind of positions identified in relation to the national crisis. Ultimately it’s rather cowardly, and conspicuously hangs over much of the movie and the terribly articulated nature of Marley’s larger goals.
There is additionally a particular cynicism detected in how much of the story takes place through his residence in Britain and along his European tour without touching on Jamaica -supposedly a linchpin of his musical identity and the movie’s priorities. Certainly it presents the album, Exodus, in a prominent light for its acclaim and accolades within Marley’s larger discography (including one very forced scene wherein a record executive played by Michael Gandolfini doubts the marketability of it); but the fact of this being a British movie with again so few  Jamaicans actually cast as Jamaican characters, attaches a shallowness to what could have been an inauspicious choice. One of Marley’s great aims is his desire to take the tour to Africa, which he prioritizes even above an American tour (his Pan-Africanism is one of the few cultural-political belief sets the film has little issue alluding to), and ultimately he did get to do it as the post-credits montage reveals -a more fascinating juncture in his career cut off by this film’s choice of climax.
But his return to Jamaica amidst political strife and the danger of having survived an assassination attempt is a pretty good hook on paper for a triumphant end to the narrative. And yet it is fundamentally hollow in lieu of both how undeveloped the politics are and how inelegantly the themes of home and homecoming are set up. There isn’t much of an effect either, as his big comeback is mostly limited to a glimpse of performing a sold-out concert in Kingston without engaging with the actual conditions of his homeland, merely again alluding to them in non-specific terms.
A few of Marley’s songs are performed across the movie, though never in full and not for significant stretches. It’s one thing that seems to set One Love apart -it is not so much about the music as it is about the personality and vibes of the musician. More time is devoted to his infected toe injury, ultimately the first sign of his melanoma that would claim his life a few years later. Nonetheless Ben-Adir maintains his energy, which is really the crux of the snippets of performances we do see. Still, the movie can’t help indulge in a few genre tropes, such as in the whole conversation around the Exodus album cover and the classic accidental inspiration for a song lyric that seems to be a resigned requirement of every musical biopic.
Bob Marley: One Love is a movie that portrays the personality and spirit of its artist fairly effectively whilst rendering generic his more specific attributes and beliefs -of which I as the uninformed viewer am still in the dark about. There’s a scene where Bob and Rita are having an argument and she makes reference to children he had had through affairs, and it is striking how such a fact clashes so much with the version of Marley the film chooses to show us. I’m not even sure where these children are. This movie eschews some aspects of the conventional biopic, but plays strongly into others; and while it explores  its subject with some introspection and even a genuine fascination in Rastafari, it is altogether more interested in the image of Marley than the man himself. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more

Back to the Feature: New York, New York (1977)

New York, New York  is a two hour forty minute musical movie largely about a toxic relationship and I understand why it was Martin Scorsese’s first big flop. Some have blamed its poor reception on the kind of movie it was, of a style and tone Scorsese wasn’t known for, but I find that hard to believe. Even after only five films, he’d proven himself an extremely versatile director, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore  found an audience. Sure this jazz musical love letter to New York City was following up Taxi Driver and its’ far more cynical take on the city, but then it’s also ‘from the director of Taxi Driver ’ which itself was a big hit. Was it a matter of public appetite for musicals, or mere word of mouth and early critical reception that dissuaded viewers? Irrespective of that, I was stunned to discover this movie was the origin of the titular song, which I’d assumed was much older (it’s definitely got the sound of something that might have come out of the Jazz sce...
Post a Comment
Read more