There has been a torrent of modern music biopics.
They all start off the same way, the artist stands facing away as the camera pulls back to reveal they are backstage at a massive event. They start to move up onto the stage and the film cuts back to their childhood and you learn their finely curated impression of their life before seeing them final triumph on the stage from the beginning of the movie.
Luckily, this isn’t one of those movies.
Bob Marley: One Love (dir. Reinaldo Marucs Green) chose to do the Spiderman version of the film. We all know that Peter Parker got bitten by a spider, so we don’t need all the back story. We need a part of his life that is interesting.
This film focuses on the fractured Jamaica’s political turmoil in the 70’s. This rivalry went from political to actual violence and in the middle of this was Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir), wanting to throw a concert for peace in 1976.
Peace was not what he was going to get. Before the concert, Bob, his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch), and several of his band members were shot by a gunman. For his safety. he left Jamaica for London.
Now the film follows the music biopic tropes, using all the music you know and love to drive the story forward. Many times you could see people in the audience bouncing their heads along to the music.
There were many parts of Marley’s story that I had never heard before and I was shocked by his cause of death and how young he was when he passed away. The challenge this music biopics faces is they rely too much on the music to tell the story.
Yes, this film only focused on a certain period of his life, which I think is a really wise choice to make, but the story should stand on its own without the music. The songs come on and everyone thinks, oh I love that song, but it doesn’t do justice to a complicated man who made some amazing music, but also presented the world with a unique and powerful voice.
But it got me listening to his music again.
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe
18 February 2024