Every little thing was just alright in “Bob Marley: One Love” musical biopic

Bob Marley: One Love, released Feb 14, is a musical biopic that gives us a snapshot of a critical period of Marley’s life, spanning from the time when he had begun to garner worldwide fame for his music until shortly before his death from cancer in 1981. 

The movie, set between 1976 and 1978, captures the making of the 1977 album, Exodus, and also features work from a number of Marley’s other iconic albums, such as Kaya and Uprising. The singing heard throughout the soundtrack and recreated concert scenes is a unique blend of Kingsley Ben-Adir, the actor who skillfully plays Marley, and archived recordings of Marley and the Wailers themselves. The film depicts Marley’s bravery in forging ahead with a concert intended to promote peace—the “One Love Peace Concert”—only months after being shot in an attempted assassination. It also tells us something about the religion that informed Bob Marley’s purpose as a human and reggae musician—to spread justice and unity throughout the world. 

The film manages to successfully convey the hypnotic effect Marley’s music has on his fans worldwide. It offers a glimpse as to how he turned his Rastafarian inspired and bible-quoting lyrics into songs that have captivated millions for decades. Developed in Jamaica in the 1930s, Rastafarianism has been described as “a religion of resistance,” or “a revolutionary ideology,” (Deepak Sarma, Case Western Reserve) in response to the oppression Black people faced; it was a melding of modern Pan-Africanism and Christianity. The movie provides context into Marley’s early life, offering the audience flashbacks to key moments into the stars lifetime—-when he falls in love with his future wife, Rita, his introduction to the Rastafarian faith, moments from an impoverished childhood that would inform his efforts to stand up against poverty and the Wailers first break as a band. However, the movie doesn’t present Rastafarianism in a three-dimensional way, as it never fully delves into the guts of the religion. 

Bob Marley: One Love captures Marley, not only as a musician, but also as a person, husband and father. Although in this regard it could have done more to reveal his thoughts and his shortcomings as a husband and father to children from a number of different women outside of his marriage. There are hints of Marley’s marital infidelity in the movie, but the complexity of his life is generally treated superficially. In the film, Rita Marley was the only person that ever put Bob in his place, grounding him whenever necessary. Lashana Lynch, the true star of the film, delivers as a moving and powerful perfomance as Rita, a key member of the Wailers and later a stand-alone musician in her own right. Ultimately, the movie delivers the message that Rita was Marley’s foundation and one love of the movie’s title. 

The final scene, and arguably one of the film’s most powerful, allows it to finish on a high note. After his performance at the 1978 One Love Peace Concert in Jamaica—at a time when Jamaica was engulfed by violence from a bitter political war—Marley called the country’s two chief political rivals onto the stage and had them join hands before the crowd, embracing a message of unity and redemption. Marley’s Redemption Song plays as a flashback is shown of young Marley walking with Haile Selassie, the former emperor of Ethiopia, who represents God on earth for Rastafarians and a father figure for Marley who hadn’t known his white father. 

Although Bob Marley: One Love, could have given us a better understanding of the intricacy of Marley's life, it is an entertaining film and does him justice as one of the pioneers of the reggae genre. While Marley himself was prodigious, his performing mesmerizing and his music timeless and influential, as conveyed in the biopic, the movie itself wasn’t a work of art; Bob Marley: One Love is undoubtedly a good movie, but not award-winning work. Since the film was a family project, two of the producers being Rita and Ziggy Marley (his son), they may not have provided enough of a critical view of Marley. It was a bit thin, only scraping the surface of a man who was decidedly more complex than we really see in the film. To understand the real Bob Marley, in order to carry on his legacy, requires knowing all sides of the story—flaws and all. As Marley said in No Woman, No Cry, “In this great future, you can’t forget your past.”