'One Love,' Little Truth
The new biopic of Bob Marley is cynical, condescending, and without drama.
There’s a catch-22 that comes with making a biopic of any famous musician(s) whose work isn’t in the public domain: the filmmakers need the cooperation of the artist(s) or their estate(s) if they want to be able to legally use their music in the movie, but the artist(s) or their estate(s) have a vested interest in protecting their image. So you wind up with a boring hagiography that does not ring true in the slightest, even if it does have a killer soundtrack.
I don’t profess to be an expert on Bob Marley, but I do know that, like all great artists, the man was what we graciously call “complicated.” He grew up impoverished, raised by a Black teenage mother and mostly ignored by his White naval officer father, and his light skin was often used against him by other Jamaicans. His widow, Rita, has alleged that he raped her, and held deeply-misogynistic views about the place of women in the world. In addition to the kids he had with Rita, he fathered a myriad of illegitimate children with other women. He reportedly declined to collaborate with Prince because he suspected the younger musician might be gay. He controversially agreed to play Gabon while it was under the despotic rule of Omar Bongo. He died from cancer at 36 after refusing to let doctors amputate his toe for religious reasons. And, oh yeah, he was a brilliant songwriter and performer who built an incredible legacy that has only grown exponentially in the 40+ years since his death.
But these details are skimmed over at best and completely ignored at worst in the new film Bob Marley: One Love, because to make the movie, the studio, Paramount, needed the cooperation of Marley’s heirs. And their priority is selling merch to suburban kids, not giving an honest account of the man’s life.
Not that historical accuracy is a prerequisite for great drama - quite the opposite - but that’s just the problem: factual or not, One Love doesn’t succeed as great drama. If it was about a fictional musician, it would still be mediocre (and it likely never would have been made).
One Love acknowledges the hardships of Marley’s childhood, because that makes him sympathetic, but mention of his children born out of wedlock is limited to one line in one scene where he’s having a fight with Rita, and as far as the movie is concerned, none of the other stuff ever happened. There is a moment where he loses his temper and physically assaults someone, but he’s given about as valid an excuse to do so as anyone could have.
Even events which would already engender compassion for Marley are reimagined to make him more saintly: relatively early in the movie, Marley, Rita, his bandmates, and his manager are the victims of a politically motivated assassination attempt (miraculously, no one was fatally wounded). In reality, Marley’s manager, Don Taylor (portrayed here by Anthony Welsh), saved Bob’s life by pushing him to the ground just as the shooters opened fire, so that Marley was shot in the arm instead of the chest; the movie acknowledges that Taylor was shot six times, but leaves out any mention of his saving Marley, because when he and Marley come into conflict later in the movie, it needs us to side against the manager.
There’s also a scene where one of Marley’s would-be murderers sneaks back into the musician’s home (HOW?!?) and begs forgiveness; Marley tells him something to the effect of, “I feel no need for vengeance, only you can redeem yourself.” If the moment feels about as likely to occurred in real life as the events of The Wizard of Oz, that’s because it didn’t: in actuality, the men who shot Marley were arrested and executed... and Marley apparently attended the execution.
This version of Marley has no rough edges, and is therefore not especially engaging. There are four credited screenwriters, including Terence Winter (The Wolf of Wall Street) and director Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard), and it’s baffling that it took so many people to come up with something this flat.
It’s not just Marley himself that the filmmakers fail to make intriguing - it’s the very context in which he did his work. We’re told that Marley’s would-be killers didn’t want Marley to play a concert that they saw as supporting the opposition… but we’re not told who they are, or who the opposition are, or what any of them stand for, or what Marley stands for, other than the always-appealing general concept of “peace.” This film had the chance to enlighten scores of people about a chapter of geo-political history the White world has mostly ignored, and it totally biffs it.
But, hey, at least it comes to a grinding halt to have a scene where Marley argues with a record executive over whether or not his photo needs to be on the cover of Exodus, right?
The weak script means that the capable leads - specifically, Kingsley Ben-Adir as Marley and Lashana Lynch as Rita - don’t really have a whole lot to do. They’re top-tier talent stuck in a television movie with an above-average budget. The supporting cast fares even worse; as far as I can tell from watching One Love, the other members of the Wailers had all the personality and significance as individual Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The real MVP of Bob Marley: One Love - other than Marley’s incredible music, of course - is cinematographer Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood), who makes every shot look positively stunning. So at least the film is nice to look at (at 107 minutes, it’s also mercifully brief).
Acknowledging at least some of Marley’s complexities would have made it 1,000% more interesting… but that’s the very thing it absolutely cannot do. Worst of all, One Love approaches its rewriting of history with cynicism and condescension: at the screening I attended, the film was preceded by a pre-recorded message from Ziggy Marley, assuring the audience that he was on set every day to ensure the movie portrayed his father accurately. There’s an implied assumption that Marley’s fans cannot hold two truths in their head at once - as though they could not possibly fathom that Marley may have contained multitudes (y’know, kinda like a real human being). Bob Marley: One Love isn’t really a film - it’s a commercial. Don’t waste your time with this one - just stay home and blast Exodus instead.
Is Terence Winter hard up for money?? Had no idea he was involved until I read this and am blown away. This is one of those movies where the trailer basically gives away the whole thing, and when I watched said trailer I had felt like I had just smoked some Jamaican tobacco because I couldn't fathom how this movie was greenlit.