Bob Marley: One Love (2024)
Next to Kurt Cobain, Counting Crows and country music, Bob Marley was pretty popular at my high school. We didn’t have any rastafari, although some people wore Marley T-shirts. I remember one guy in my chemistry class, Brad, who wore rasta wear every single day. The rest of us just listened to the music. Marley was always there, a symbol of laid-back cool and understated grit.
However, Marley was always kind of an enigma, which is why I’ve been excited to see Bob Marley: One Love. There’s a particularly lovely scene in the trailer when Marley turns off a worrying news report on the car radio and sings “Don’t Worry” to his two boys until they smile, and I was happy to see the rest of the movie mostly lives up to my expectations.
One Love focuses on the years between the 1976 Smile Jamaica concert, the assassination attempt on his life and when Marley returned to Jamaica from England after a two-year exile. During that time Marley and his band, the Wailers, wrote, recorded, and toured their highly successful album, Exodus.
The movie portrays Marley’s struggle to reconcile the conflicts he was feeling within himself and the peace he strove to give through his music, as well as what seemed to be some of his creative process. I have to say, I went into the movie not knowing much about Marley, and there’s not a lot of exposition going on, but things really got to me. There are a lot of places in the movie where the music just flows, and it’s impossible not to tap along with it. It’s got such a great texture to it that it almost feels live. Honestly, it’s the best part, and the movie showcases it nicely, with no quick edits or trendy stuff. It all breathes.
Kingsley Ben-Adir really brings Marley back to life. It’s so common for actors who play larger-than-life personalities to stretch and contort themselves in their roles, especially if their subjects have distinctive features.
Like Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland. If anyone has ever seen Being the Ricardos or Judy, there are scenes when these actresses seem to be trying really, really hard to make their eyes bigger. I’m sorry, but it’s cringe-y. They look so uncomfortable. Anyway…
Ben-Adir seems very relaxed in his role, projecting Marley, or at least the Marley of the film, and really caught Marley’s performance style, which sometimes seems dizzy or just stoned (There’s a lot of toking all over the place, but that’s to be expected). Most of the time Ben-Adir’s Marley goes between quiet suffering, quiet violence, or quiet optimism.
Amazingly enough, though, Marley’s persona was toned down for the big screen. Oldest son Ziggy Marley remembers his dad as being a fighter and a much more violent person than the way he was portrayed in the movie. He also fathered many more children than we see on the screen—the movie shows six kids, but Marley had eleven in real life, and not all of them with his wife, Rita. Marley’s family was heavily involved in the making of the film, and sought to present Marley in as optimistic a light as possible.
Lashana Lynch is another highlight, and her scenes with Marley are all too few. She’s really good at keeping Marley on track and helping him face down his demons. I wish more could have been done with their relationship, because what’s there is golden.
I think Bob Marley: One Love is my favorite film of 2024 so far. Maybe not the best film of 2024, but certainly my favorite.
Bob Marley: One Love is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.
My grade: B+
Principal Cast: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton, Tosin Cole, Umi Myers, Anthony Welsh, Nia Ashi, Aston Barrett, Jr., Anna-Share Blake, Gawaine ‘J-Summa’ Campbell, Naomi Cowan, Alexx A-Game, Michael Gandolfini, Quan-Dajal Henriques, David Marvin Kerr, Jr., Hector Donald Lewis, Abijah Livingston, Nadine Marshall.
Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green.
Written by Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers, and Zach Baylin.