When approaching the cinematic biography of a pop music star, those responsible always have two main options: cover an entire existence, or at least a comprehensive journey that helps to understand the meaning of not only their music, but also your personality; or focus on a much shorter period of life, which is primary in its artistic aspect or in its personal core, but which ultimately results in a complex portrait. In the first case, the greatest danger is superficiality: you go all the way, but go through everything without sinking the knife into anything. In the second case, the threat is that not all artists have an impressive dramatic core that encompasses them as artists and as people.
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They haven't yet decided on “Bob Marley: One Love”, a biopic about the legendary Jamaican musician directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and produced by, among others, Brad Pitt and Marley's widow and singing children (Rita, Ziggy and Cedella). Choosing one or the other option and they wanted to cover both. They chose the right period, a short period of time, from the opening to the concert in December 1976 at the National Heroes Park in Kingston (Jamaica), which was transformed into a political event from the moment the organizer, the then first minister Michael Manley, called elections when it was not yet appropriate just a day after Marley agreed to perform at the event, thus exploiting the star's momentum until the One Love peace concert in April 1978, this, yes, organized by the singer herself in search of national reconciliation, at a time when Jamaica was on the brink of civil war. A year and a half in which Marley's personal and artistic life took a huge turn and in which the events (of all kinds: musical, political, criminal and even health) were so dramatic that he was clearly defined there.
Lashana Lynch and Kingsley Ben-Amir as Rita and Bob Marley in the film.
But in a film that Terence Winter, one of the most renowned screenwriters of “The Sopranos” and creator of “Boardwalk Empire”, began to write, it seems that in the end there were too many creators involved, including the director Marcus Green himself, and That's not the case. They were content with the year and a half. They've filled it with meaningless flashbacks (musical, religious and even soap opera) that try to round out Marley's drawing but only muddy the whole thing. Among other things, because the director's academic production, which was already demonstrated in “The Williams Method” (the biopic about the tennis-playing sisters Venus and Serena around their father), becomes smooth and somewhat bombastic with this dichotomy between the absence of the biological father (Marley was a bastard, the son of a white British soldier of whom he knew nothing and of whom he only kept a photograph) and the presence of a kind of spiritual father, recreated in the ghost figure of the Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie, who The Musician Never Hears stop reading and idolizing.
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Well, and although Marley's feminine side is also conspicuous by her absence (No Woman no Cry), not everything in the film is so reprehensible. As the canon dictates, it is the music that ultimately dominates, and in this sense the joy of the creative process of an album as legendary as Exodus is gratifying, even if in this year and a half it is full of fear and anger, full of pain and success was created. More similar to the idolized lightness of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and some early 2000s titles (mainly “Ray”) than the energy of “Rocketman,” “Bob Marley: One Love” may appeal to lovers of more conventional biopics. Marley's imposing personality and the musical, social and political power of his songs benefit the film.
BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE
Address: Reinaldo Marcus Green.
Actor: Kingsley Ben-Amir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton, Anthony Welsh.
Gender: Biopic. USA, 2024.
Duration: 104 minutes.
Premiere: February 14th.
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