Bob Marley One Love: Family-Approved Biopic Exalts the Reggae Star as It Should
By Kim Hughes
Rating: B
Given that a sizable chunk of the Marley clan was involved in the production of Bob Marley: One Love, the biopic of the late Jamaican reggae superstar, it’s hardly surprising that the film bathes its central character in an exultant light.
But even if Orly Marley, Ziggy Marley, Rita Marley, and Cedella Marley weren’t involved as producers and consultants on the film, there is no denying the dazzling, evergreen musical legacy Marley created in his criminally brief 36 years on earth despite his very humble beginnings. That’s entirely worthy of celebration.
From that perspective, director Reinaldo Marcus Green’s exhaustively detailed Bob Marley: One Love is better than expected and likely to satisfy expectations of fans without drawing too much ire. Irie it is.
The years 1976 to 1978 were pivotal ones in Marley's life and career, and the film puts its focus there, opening with the perennially blunted singer-songwriter at a press conference discussing his upcoming Smile Jamaica concert, intended as a spiritual balm for the island nation, which was on the cusp of civil war after years of post-colonial unrest and political infighting.
Just two days before the December 5 concert, Marley endured an assassination attempt at his Kingston home, as did wife and bandmate Rita Marley, his manager Don Taylor and band assistant Louis Griffiths. All survived, but the mental toll was obvious and the stakes for moving forward with the performance incredibly high despite its ostensibly bipartisan stance. But proceed it did.
Post-concert, Rita and the children headed to safety in Delaware to be with Marley’s mother. Marley went to London, and began what would become the groundbreaking 1977 Exodus album which propelled the Wailers to global fame before cancer snatched Marley in 1981. Much of the film spends its time there.
Bob Marley: One Love scores top marks for visual authenticity — its Jamaican setting obvious yet easily shortcut — and it’s buoyed by terrific lead performances from Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob Marley, who nails the patois, and Lashana Lynch as Rita Marley. Their wattage makes it easier to forgive their characters in flashback, which don’t nearly summon the same gravitas.
Other aspects are nerd-friendly fun. Marley stumbles into a raging Clash gig in London before being collared by bobbies for smoking weed in public. Island Records honcho Chris Blackwell (James Norton) gets loads of screen time and snappy retorts, and Marley’s football obsession is included.
Of course, the music is terrific, and scenes of the Wailers spooling out rocksteady riffs in Marley’s living room and later in a London recording studio — always, always amid thick clouds of ganja — are especially elevating, serving as potent counters to the film’s less studiously observed aspects, such as Marley’s prodigious baby-making with multiple women.
This is rooted in the film’s clear intent to portray Marley as a musician and a loving husband and father — Marley family insistence? — and it might also explain why Rita gets some of One Love’s best lines. But in the end, it’s the music carrying the legacy and that’s where the chills are appropriately stirred.
Marley’s Rastafarianism, so central to his life and music, is addressed, sort of, though I found myself wanting to know more about how it spoke to him as a young man. In One Love, it is Rita who brings her young husband to the faith, but what connects him to it on such a profound level is intimated rather than outlined.
His cancer is dealt with briskly, without undue dramatization, and none of the Wailers get much spotlight. But the final frames do feature footage of the man himself, which is both to be expected and entirely welcome.
Bob Marley: One Love does not give a documentary’s worth of information and analysis into one of the 20th century’s most interesting, beloved performers. And yes, its approach is formulaic. But it celebrates Marley’s charisma and influence, and his music, which sounds as vital today as ever. Fair trade.
Bob Marley: One Love. Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green. Starring Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton, Tosin Cole, Umi Myers, Anthony Welsh, Nia Ashi, Aston Barrett Jr., Anna-Sharé Blake, Gawaine “J-Summa” Campbell, Naomi Cowan, Alexx A-Game, Michael Gandolfini, Quan-Dajai Henriques, David Kerr, Hector Roots Lewis, Abijah “Naki Wailer” Livingston, Nadine Marshall, Sheldon Shepherd, Andrae Simpson, and Stefan A.D Wade. In theatres February 14.