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| Director Reinaldo Marcus Green |
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| Bob Marley |
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| The director with Kingsley Ben-Adir |
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| Ziggy Marley with Kingsley Ben-Adir |
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| Haile Selassie |
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| Emperor Haile Selassie's crown |
BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE B USA (104 mi) 2024 ‘Scope d: Reinaldo Marcus Green
Exodus. Movement of Jah people!
Exodus. Movement of Jah people!
Open your eyes (And look within)
Are you satisfied? (With the life you’re livin’?)
We know where we’re goin’
We know where we’re from
We’re leavin’ Babylon
We’re goin' to our Fatherland
Bob Marley - Exodus (Live At The Rainbow 4th June 1977) YouTube (7:24)
While this is an authorized biography from the Bob Marley family and estate, co-produced by son Ziggy and Bob’s wife Rita Marley, also daughter Cedella, while another son Stephen is the music supervisor, but that by no means indicates it’s better, though it should be, as the filmmaker has access to extensive material no one else has, so it should be more accurate and more thoroughly comprehensive, delving into the music and hidden complexities of his life. By contrast, Sofia Coppola’s recent film Priscilla (2023) couldn’t even play an Elvis song, as his estate wouldn’t allow it, but that’s a much better film, made by a director with a more elaborately constructed artistic vision. This, on the other hand, feels more conventional, yet there was nothing conventional about reggae legend Bob Marley who took the world by storm, combining American doo-wop and rhythm-and-blues with an odd new rhythm accentuating the offbeat, whose Rastafarian message of peace, love, and unity was embraced by a public clamoring for more, where the main thing was always the message contained in his music about how we live life and how we treat others. The Marley family imprint is all over this film, actually introduced in a brief clip by Ziggy Marley, where this is something of a valentine to his father, paying tribute to the loving relationship between Bob and Rita, as the film presents him as his adoring family sees him, and how they want the rest of the world to remember him, though they were no longer together by the end, having survived the extramarital affairs, confessing in her memoirs No Woman No Cry: My Life with Bob Marley, she became more “like his sister, his mother, and his guardian angel.” Making no attempt to tell the story of his life, this encapsulates only a brief period in the mid 70’s, a time of turmoil in Jamaica, where rival political factions, the American backed Jamaica Labour Party of former Prime Minister Edward Seaga and the socialist People’s National Party of the sitting Prime Minister Michael Manley, ended up unleashing rampant gang violence that swept the island, creating panic and confusion, leading to a state of emergency, giving the military and the police extraordinary powers to quell the storm, where some thought it may have been a plot to rig the election. During this period, just days before Marley planned to give a free Smile Jamaica Concert promoting peace organized by Manley in order to ease tensions, politically motivated gunmen attempted to assassinate Marley and his wife, shooting both, yet each survived, with rival factions believing the concert was an excuse to hold a rally in support of Manley. While still performing, briefly, exposing his wounds, this incident traumatized Marley and his family, sending Rita and the children to the United States to live in safety, while spending two years afterwards in self-imposed exile with his band in London where most of this film takes place, much of it told through flashback visions and stream-of-conscious memories, creating an internalized picture of the personal anguish he was going through.
The film is an excuse to reimmerse yourself in the legendary music of Bob Marley, which is easily the best part of the picture, as he almost singlehandedly gave rise to reggae music as an art form, extending the reach worldwide, following up on Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come (1972), where the superb musical soundtrack (The Harder They Come (Original Soundtrack Recording) ...), featuring some of Kingston’s best acts, introduced reggae and its culture to the world. British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir, previously starring as Malcolm X in Regina King’s ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI (2020) and Barack Obama in the TV mini-series THE COMEY RULE (2020), gives a captivating performance as Marley, while British actress Lashana Lynch provides a standout performance as Rita, as she literally shines, bringing firmness and compassion to the role, where her colorful presence as a member of the I-Threes background singers becomes an integral part of Marley’s stage shows, while there are also interspersed flashback sequences of a young, teenaged Marley (Quan-Dajai Henriques) meeting his future wife, Rita Anderson (Nia Ashi), revealing she’s been by his side since childhood. Flashbacks also reveal how his white father, a British colonial officer, abandoned him at an early age, leading to recurring visions of a child surrounded by fire, while his father on a horse rides off and leaves him there. This same image reappears multiple times, as if imprinted into his brain, but by the end of the film the father on the horse has been replaced by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, the revered father of the Rastafari movement where he is worshipped as God incarnate, viewing him as the living messiah that Jamaican Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey prophesized in the 1930’s would lead the African diaspora to freedom (“Look to Africa, when a black king shall be crowned for the day of deliverance is near!”). These beliefs are at the heart of Marley’s music, running through the lyrics of his songs, perhaps best exemplified by Bob Marley - War (Official Music Video) - YouTube (3:55), which is based on Selassie’s iconic speech before the United Nations General Assembly on October 4, 1963 (Haile Selassie I's speech to the UN in 1963).
Until the philosophy which hold one
race
Superior and another inferior
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned
Everywhere is war, me say war.
That until there are no longer
first class
and second class citizens of any nation
Until the color of a man’s skin
is of no more significance than the color of his eyes
Me say war.
Fast forward to where we are today, as war rages unabated in both Ukraine and Gaza while the world looks on in horror and disbelief, yet also indifference, as not much has changed since Selassie made his remarks. According to the Geneva Academy (Today's Armed Conflicts), an education institution in international humanitarian law, human rights, and transitional justice, there are currently more than 110 armed conflicts happening around the world at the moment, and most are due to ethnicity, color, or resources, just as they always have been, where in the infamous words of 19th century Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Anyone who’s read The Iliad by Homer can attest to this, written 800 B.C.E. yet the wholesale killing continues. Marley’s revolutionary musical vision, which he always viewed as a transcendent experience, was meant to put an end to the hatred that divides us, using music to spiritually unite the world with a brilliant synthesis of musical styles, employing the language of the King James Bible to sing of revolution, emancipation, and freedom.
In London, Marley experiences discrimination at the hands of the police and a violent reaction from punk rockers, discovering racism and rebellion go hand in hand, while also encountering cold temperatures and disagreements within the band, but it’s also where his vision began to transform with the epic scope of his album Exodus, Bob Marley & The Wailers - Exodus (Full Album) - YouTube (37:24), using an electric guitar to develop a brand new reggae sound. Seen with his band leisurely tinkering with a new song, each member gradually joins in as we hear a rough draft of what would eventually become the title song, Exodus - YouTube YouTube (7:41), making a Biblical reference to Moses leading the Israelites out of exile and into freedom, the group is seen practicing the song as it develops, a slowed down, collaborative effort that features a trance-like hypnotic rhythm, punctuated by its resounding chorus of “Exodus, Movement of Jah people!” Marley even wanted a different album cover, choosing something more simplistic, but immediately recognizable, countering the position of the white people footing the bills, music publicist Howard Bloom (Michael Gandolfini) and Island Records producer Chris Blackwell (James Norton), as they thought it would never work, but this was the first Marley single played on black radio stations in America, expanding what was predominately a white collegiate audience, becoming his first international hit. It remains perhaps his most transcendent song, where it would be impossible to associate it with anyone other than Bob Marley, whose Rasta identity runs through it like a pulsing heart. There are flashbacks to his first studio recording as a teenager with the Wailing Wailers, where a gun-toting record producer ("Obituary: Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd") is ready to kick them out until he hears them directing a message to the rude boys on the streets in a new song, The Wailing Wailers - "Simmer Down" (Official Audio) - YouTube (2:50), urging them to stop the violence in the crime-ridden ghettos of Kingston, becoming a number one hit in Jamaica in 1964, signing Marley to his first record contract with Studio One, then the most important recording studio in Jamaica. Isolated and alone in London, however, feeling the need for his wife’s presence, he sends for her, conjuring up memories of the past, recognizing her as his spiritually aligned soulmate, yet their European success has unintended consequences, with a gala of jet set cocktail festivities exposing a fractured relationship that bubbles up to the surface in a heated argument that comes out of nowhere (Marley had 11 children with 7 different women), where she reminds him, “You swim in pollution, you get polluted,” yet when she initially arrives he’s quietly heard strumming the lyric for a new song on an acoustic guitar, Bob Marley & The Wailers - Natural Mystic (Music Video) YouTube (3:21).
There’s a natural mystic
Blowing through the air
If you listen carefully now you will hear
This could be the first trumpet
Might as well be the last
Many more will have to suffer
Many more will have to die
Don’t ask me why
The release of this album coincided with a sold-out European tour that turned him onto a star, with Marley becoming a messianic figure with legions of followers, and a superstar in Jamaica, returning to the island as a triumphant hero, reconnecting with his children, where he was driven to perform yet another concert that would showcase rival political faction unity, One Love Peace Concert, where the leaders of the opposing parties joined hands, but they publicly continued to blame each other afterwards and the event did little to quell the political violence. Leading up to that moment, however, Marley is visited by one of the men who shot him (an incident that never happened), remorsefully asking for forgiveness, where his calm response, as if possessed by a higher spirit, is an indication of what kind of man he is, as there’s no revenge or retribution in his heart, suggesting instead that the man needs to forgive himself in the eyes of the Creator. The low point comes from the discovery he has a rare form of skin cancer on a toe that refuses to heal, injured during a pickup soccer game during the middle of his European tour, but he refused the recommended treatment, which was amputation of his toe to stop the cancer from spreading, as his Rastafarian religion considered it a sin to remove any part of the body. While this is perfectly understandable, it also cost him his life. This medical catastrophe sets a darker tone, postponing his planned American and African tours, finally making it to Zimbabwe in 1980 on the eve of their independence from British colonial rule, where crucial to his Rastafari worldview, which is embedded throughout his music, is a reverence for Africa as the source of black life. He was specifically interested in resisting the racist, colonial systems that Rastafari teachings identify as a source of suffering among black people around the world. While there is valid criticism that this film doesn’t tell the full story of his life, providing only brief excerpts, never attempting to unlock the key to his massive popularity, it was written by a coterie of writers that omits the darker edges, or even the fact that he wrote the Kaya album at the same time he was in London, yet it does equate with artists today taking a more active role in writing their own legacy and shaping their own image. This is framed as a love story with a tragic ending, generating plenty of welled-up emotions from both the magnificence of the music and the power of the performances, creating more of a tribute to what Bob Marley stood for, where his message was never more needed than it is today, as there are alarming similarities to the divisiveness of Jamaica during the 70’s and the world of today. Intolerance and hatred seem to define the new age, spreading like a virus, where the redemptive concepts Marley sang about seem to be forgotten, but this film is a pleasant reminder for a new generation.
Bob Marley & The Wailers - Live at the Rainbow (Full Concert) London, June 4, 1977, YouTube (1:23:12)
