Published 2024-02-15 16.44
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full screen Photo: Chiabella James / Chiabella James
Bob Marley: one love
Regi Reinaldo Marcus Green, with Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana LynchJames Norton, Anthony Welsh, Michael Gandolfini
MOVIE REVIEW. Much is worth applauding with “Bob Marley: one love”, but it would probably have been possible to extract greater drama from a film about the reggae legend’s most tumultuous time in his life.
DRAMA. In order for a feature film about a legendary artist to have a chance of working, the director basically needs to choose to focus on a limited, central period in his career.
This is when it is possible to deepen the story and the characters and limit the always imminent risk of cliché masquerading.
“Bob Marley: one love” gets it right. The period 1976-78 was a politically explosive period in Jamaica, there Bob Marley and his family were literally in the firing line as the island’s great musical son tried to calm the differences and find unity.
Marley realized that Kingston was too dangerous a place for him at the time and fled to London with the band The Wailers. There, right in the epicenter of punk, they recorded “Exodus”, one of rock history’s indisputably most classic albums.
It was also during this period that the singer was informed of the cancer that would take his life in 1981 at the age of just 36.
Add to that tensions in the marriage with the wife Rita and you have material for lots of loaded drama.
The film as the director Reinaldo Marcus Green (“King Richard” and more) delivers also has a number of merits.
The sense of time is genuine, the photo beautiful, the music downright dazzling.
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1 / 2Foto: Chiabella James / Chiabella James
Kingsley Ben-Adirknown from, among other things, “Barbie”, succeeds nicely both in capturing the stage character Marley and bringing the involuntary superstar to life on the side of the stage, right down to the dialect.
Also Lashana Lynch makes a nuanced and compelling Rita Marley.
The Marley family are executive producers of the film, and although they say they have been keen to paint an honest and unvarnished picture, there is still something a little off about the story, despite all the ganja-scented attention to detail.
Presenting the different sides of Bob Marley the man (the rasta man, the ladies’ man) sometimes seems to have been more important than really making the story glow.
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full screen “Bob Marley: one love”. Photo: Chiabella James / Chiabella James
When Marley is shot in his home, more fear and pain could have been squeezed out of the drama.
One can sense that the father who disappeared from the picture early on has left a deep impression on Marley, but even that part does not become clear enough to really grasp.
It’s fun to watch the reggae legend play football and go watch The Clash at a club but it might not add too much to the story itself.
Despite the fact that “Bob Marley: one love” succeeds in reminding us of how music actually is able to change the world it feels like less of a movie experience than it could have been.
Shown in cinemas.
FACT
BONUS
ALSO BE SURE TO SEE: The “Classic albums” documentary about “Catch a fire”, the 1973 album that made Bob Marley an international superstar. Available on various streaming services.
DID YOU KNOW THAT… “Exodus” in 1999 was named the very best album of the 20th century by the magazine Time?
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