“Bob Marley: One Love” Review
Kingsley Ben-Air brings reggae icon Bob Marley to life in “Bob Marley: One Love”, a biopic based on the last five years of the musician’s life.
I’m pretty much done with rock music biopics at this point. So many of them feel like attempts by a studio to cash in on an artist’s legacy as opposed to telling an earnest story or giving us a unique perspective on a public figure. While some recent entries in this genre, like “Elvis”, “Rocketman” and “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”, have impressed me, other films like “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and “The Dirt” have felt lifeless. I can’t say that “Bob Marley: One Love” has the soulless feeling that other biopics possess, but it’s a disappointing film nevertheless that tries too much in too short a time, resulting in a film that falls short of the powerful legacy of the music icon.
Set in the late 1970s, Jamaica is experiencing extreme political tension and gang violence that is threatening to tear the country apart. At the center of this is reggae legend and Jamaica’s champion Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) who is nearing the height of his worldwide fame. Seeking to make music that will bring peace to his people, Marley must grapple with monumental obstacles, including an assassination attempt and his diagnosis with cancer, that could prevent him from fulfilling his destiny.
While the overall idea of the film sounds like the basis for a solid story (keeping the timeline focused on a handful of years as opposed to a tired “cradle-to-grave” narrative), “One Love” still feels overstuffed. Throughout the entire runtime, we see things happen to Bob Marley but we don’t feel them and there is a strong difference. Between nearly being gunned down, making his iconic album “Exodus”, playing peace concerts and discovering that he has a disease that will ultimately claim his life, there’s a lot of groundwork for emotional exploration that is never built upon. I wanted to feel the pain, joy, anger and life that Bob Marley felt but those emotions just aren’t there.
“One Love’s” script tries to condense too many elements of Marley’s life into one hour and forty-four minutes and even goes outside of the established timeline to add even more to the story. There are several flashbacks to Bob Marley as a young man that show how he met his wife Rita, the relationship with his parents and how he was discovered as a musician. Not only do these flashbacks not tie into what’s happening to Marley in the rest of the film but they only serve to show us what we already know about him. They feel completely tacked on.
The film does have some positive elements that are warranting praise, especially Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob Marley. Out of all of the world’s accents, Jamaica's has got to be one of the most challenging to pull off and Ben-Aidr not only does so but seamlessly transforms into the musician. His performance is really down-to-Earth and you never get the sense that he’s doing this for awards or any of the other stereotypical reasons we think actors do biopics. There’s a warmth to him that perfectly compliments the music Bob sang and the message that it contained.
Lashana Lynch is also wonderful as Rita Marley and not only provides a sense of security but also is an equal to Marley who isn’t sucked in by the celebrity. There’s an especially good scene where Rita and Bob have an argument and Rita unloads all of her husband’s shortcomings, including the fact that he’s had children outside of their marriage, and it’s handled well. I always get nervous when family members or anyone who was related to the musician is involved with the biopic (Rita Marley and her children Ziggy and Cedella are credited producers of the film) but it’s clear that the film doesn’t want to sanitize Marley and wants to capture him in a loving but realistic way. It just lacks clear direction.
“One Love” does have a handful of scenes that feel like an earnest attempt to capture the tender side of Bob Marley including his Rastafraian beliefs and the small but meaningful moments of him and his family just enjoying each other’s company. They’re little scenes but they make you feel more connected to Marley in a way the rest of the film fails.
Not only am I a big fan of Bob Marley’s music and legacy, but I’ve been to several reggae shows including one featuring Ziggy Marley. I say this because reggae music has a particular kind of feeling to it. It's incredible music that unifies complete strangers with a message of peace and love but with this vibrant energy that can make people move. That energy is nowhere to be found in the moments where Bob Marley and The Wailers are performing and that alone makes this biopic a failure.
The film’s treatment of the music Marley produced feels entirely backwards because most of the signs are used non-diegetically in montage sequences. I don't want to see that, I want to see these songs be performed. Even when “One Love” focuses on Marley making the album “Exodus”, it feels very shallow with little attention on the songwriting process and more focus on the Wailers playing football and recording the song after it was already written. Imagine if a film like “Love & Mercy” completely removed the sequence of Brian Wilson coming up with “Good Vibrations”, showing its evolution from a piano riff to a miniature symphony and all the joys and pains of recording it and instead just showing The Beach Boys singing into a microphone. If you find yourself making a music biopic and you don’t take the time to show how an artist’s creative process naturally unfolds, you have wasted our time.
For most of “One Love”, I was getting through it fine. It wasn’t good but there was enough great music and strong acting for me to give it a pass. The film’s ending completely changed that by being an underwhelming mess. At the film’s end, after being diagnosed with cancer and becoming a worldwide sensation, Marely returns to Jamaica to play an unity concert which is a big risk considering that he was almost assassinated there in 1976. But it appears that he’s going to play this massive show with several hit songs that’s supposed to leave the audience on a high note, similarly to how “Bohemian Rhapsody” ended with the band’s set Live Aid. The concert is never shown. Instead, the film ends with a montage of footage of the real Marley playing the concert and also playing in a recently liberated Zimbabwe which are significant events that would have been more powerful if they were part of the film’s story. I guess “One Love” was trying to do what “Elvis” had effectively done, showing footage of the real person to remind us of their legacy, but it comes across as shallow when we could have gotten some incredible concert footage shot in a cinematically pleasing way.
While not the worst music biopic I’ve seen (there are enough good moments to make the film passable for most audiences), I was very disappointed by “One Love” because we could have gotten something special. Instead, it’s one of many music biopics that feels like a cinematic version of the artist’s Wikipedia page as opposed to a cohesive story. My favorite music biopics are the ones that made me feel like I understood this person much more with notable works being “I’m Not There”, “Love & Mercy”, “Ray”, “What’s Love Got To Do With It”, “Selena” and “Elvis”. Even films which are based on real people but tell stories of fiction, like “Velvet Goldmine” and “Almost Famous”, still capture an authentic and moving experience of popular music. Sadly, “One Love” will never be as beloved as the music it’s based on.
