Describe This Movie In One Simpsons Quote:
BART: Dad, you can't wear that. It's a Rastafarian hat.Brief Plot Synopsis: In which one of Eric Clapton's best songs is written by a Jamaican.
HOMER: Hey, I've been safari-ing since before you were born.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 3 little birds out of 5.
Tagline: "First he changed music, then he changed the world."
Better Tagline: "Did he really, though?"
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: It's 1976, and beloved reggae musician Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is trying in vain to keep his beloved Jamaica from descending into chaos. His plans to unite the country hit a snag when gunmen ambush him in his home, wounding both Bob and his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch). Sending Rita and the kids to his mother's in the U.S., Bob retreats to London with his band, the Wailers, to record what will be his signature album (Exodus) and cement his legend.
"Critical" Analysis: Bob Marley's real-life son Ziggy introduces One Love, a move that feels like an attempt to assure audiences that what they're about to watch is as accurate a retelling of Marley's life as director Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard) and writers Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers, and Zach Baylin could manage.
It's a nice gesture, and while my first instinct would be to call in an unnecessary one, it occurred to me that in 2024, Bob Marley exists for most as a semi-mythic figure, yet somehow an alarmingly apolitical one. The best example I can recall is a college memory of seeing a trio of frat boys sitting on a couch and passing a joint around while singing "Exodus." That was also the moment when I realized irony was dead.
Green is smart to begin One Love at the height of Marley's fame, when he was one of the only people in Jamaica capable of potentially bringing people together on the eve of a contentious Presidential election (or not, considering the attempt on his life was made two days before what was to be a free "unity" concert).
How we regard our cultural icons is like a kind of dissociative amnesia, remembering the spliff puffing Marley on the cover of Catch A Fire while forgetting both his commitments to peace and Pan-Africanism as well as the deeply spiritual bent of his life and music. He was one of the most openly religious entertainers with mass appeal, and his faith in Jah (or Haile Selassie, or both) informed his work and his life equally.
Green weaves flashbacks of young "Nesta's" life (Green, along with several biographers, assert that and not "Robert" was his actual first name), of moving to Trenchtown in Kingston as a boy, and of halting encounters with his white father, who supported his son but was otherwise absent. The scenes of Marley and the "Wailing Wailers" (as they were known) securing a record deal are perfunctory, and perhaps too reminiscent of a similar sequence from Walk the Line.
Because try as he might, Green can't help but stumble into some familiar biopic pitfalls (biopicfalls?): the facile conflict resolutions between Bob and Rita; the framing of a single event (1978's "One Love Peace Concert," which resulted in neither love nor peace) as a life's climax; or the perfunctory treatment given to the less savory aspects of Marley's personality.
Hollywood does its level best to render every historical figure in an easily digestible framework. Marley's life defies that, but not even the good intentions of One Love can adequately project his complexity. With luck, it'll strike a chord with those whose only experience with Bob Marley is hearing "Three Little Birds" in a Montego bay commercial.
Bob Marley: One Love is in theaters today.
