Bob Marley: One Love
PARAMOUNTBob Marley: One Love, in a very strange way, can be compared to Taikai Waititi’s Next Goal Wins. Not in tone or end product, but in the fact they both come after incredibly successful and somewhat definitive documentaries on their respective subject matters with incredibly rich critical success. As both follow up these terrific pieces of cinema in the form of the biopic, they fault in being sterile, lifeless and often poorly crafted pieces from creatives who aren’t quite interested in the actual material at hand.
This is made even more bizarre and indescribable in that One Life comes right out of the gates and the mouth itself from the Marley estate. They have had ultimate creative control in casting, depth, material, etc within this feature. Almost in a very similar circumstance to Queen in Bohemian Rhapsody and the controversial Jackson estate in the upcoming Michael Jackson biopic. Now, a feature from the heart and soul of a family estate that wants to evoke a sense of honour and respect for the subject itself is warming and understandable, but that’s one thing. When said subject is rinsed and sanitised to a point in which it is bleached to evoke a different character and theme is an element that, unfortunately, can not go unnoticed. There are two major issues with Marley: the material and the conviction. Starting with the former and aforementioned above, the material at hand is constantly finding issues in how to form this story. On one hand, it is a biopic of Marley and the other is a life event that stamps a moment or event in this creative’s life and the depth surrounding it. Does this sound familiar? Well, it’s an incredibly conventional motif that’s used in DeVito’s Hoffa, Stone’s Nixon or more recently Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s a conventional, non-cyclical narrative technique to achieve two things. The first is to create weight to the story in the context of knowing the viewer is going to watch a meteoric rise and, therefore subconsciously, the material building up is much-needed viewing. Secondly, is it a reminder to fans as a signal of showcasing that the creatives are bringing something iconic and based in fan-lore into mainstream consciousness. All is well and good, but it’s a conventional technique that is consistently burned and boring, only reinforcing that said events will only be as predictable and safe as any other contemporary feature in the genre. One Love is a feature that, once again, fails to elicit or subvert expectations within this context. It sets its sights at building towards a major event in the history of this subject and builds up in terms of narrative depth. The issue is that the material at hand is sterile and flat. It is ostensibly boring and monotone, both thematically and tonally. The irony is that the event itself – bringing a divided Jamaica together – is almost unrecognisable and unimportant with little merit narratively provided. Equally as despondent and disposable are events leading up to and after said event has occurred, which is a bullet point viewing of a rich history of an internationally renowned and recognised voice and iconic figure. Only to be labelled as boring, one note, and flat without merit and discourse. How disappointing and utterly pathetic to ridicule a multifaceted character who did wrong and right as any flawed human being only to sodomise and rip apart any maligned character traits to purify and preserve an identity that isn’t real? The writing is so incredibly poor, it’s patronising and condescending to witness. Lines of dialogue are crafted to do two things. Either lean on foreshadowing for the legend of Marley himself in a Family Guy-esque approach or lead into the next scene that does the mentioned technique: rinse and repeat. It’s so tiring and frustrating to witness such horrid sequences stitched together without any frame of depth or clarity to this character audiences are watching. Watching this it’s so hard to recognise who this subject is. He is a family man? He shares two scenes with his children. Does he love his wife? It’s never explored, and Marley was a repeat womaniser. Is this about the racism he faced? We watch him face this multiple times without any further discussion. Does he struggle with his identity? Not really, he just wants to understand his father’s decision to push him away. It is that easy and describable in regards to a script that has nothing to provide in-depth. One sequence has a major character shot in the head and then through a line of dialogue brought back to life and to this story without it being mentioned again or given any realm of material to not only explain or for the characters that surround this event to be given emotional depth and development. Made even more genuinely frustrating and confusing is that this has four credited writers, Doing what? What is the need for a feature that is barely over ninety minutes long needing four writers to provide substantive material? It’s bonkers.
Now this brings the conversation nicely on the secondary issue of conviction, which has been alluded to in the paragraph above. Much discussion was mentioned in the lead-up to the release about the casting of a Black British actor as the titular character, with idiocy of controversy which the Marley estate personally selected. Whether he is Jamaican or not, the level of depth that actor Kingsley Ben-Adir brings to the “depth” (in terms of this atrocious screenplay) in regards to racism, finding a place in this world and the shoulders of playing an icon be it Malcolm X in One Night In Miami of which little to no controversy erupted in casting of identity. That being said, Ben-Adir does not look, sound or even attempt to vocalise Marley in any way possible. He is left to wrestle with dialogue and depth that is never wanted to be explored other than to state the obvious and the result is quite a bland almost comatose degree of performance. Director Reinaldo Marcus Green does not get out of this lightly either. A creative power that has consistently brought black voices and poignant tales to the screen, identifying thematics of racism, body and survival, of whose identity and voice are utterly lost here both thematically and visually. Not at one point does this venture show any form of identity through visualisation or visual texture. Compared to something like Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman, which melds and intertwines the visceral nature of the music, the musican, and narrative feature of utter bravado, One Love is flat, uninspired and, quite frankly, uninterested in developing a visual style from arguably one of the most striking iconographies in music.
Bob Marley: One Love was always going to struggle and be in the shadow of Kevin Macdonald’s exquisite and defining documentary Marley, but in the year 2024 to deliver a biopic so sanitised, boring and poorly crafted is a sin that can not – and should not – be given credence. Creatives and producers should be ashamed of releasing this in the state and false virtue form it is in. Not only is it patronising in terms of the subject to fans and his legacy, but in the context of wider audiences. All comes down to the feeling that this is just economic greed from an estate and producers in releasing the most trodden and uninspired product, expecting audiences and viewers to eat this up no questions asked. Thankfully, nobody wants to see this, and the critical annihilation received is another warning to those who think they can take viewers’ money and think nothing more of it.
