Bob Marley: One Love
The most beautiful songs are those you can play for children. There’s nothing like a good verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus structure to show kids what it's like to live here on Earth. One of the first songs I remember liking as a kid was “One Love/People Get Ready.” There is no better way to introduce a new person to the truth of life: that we all really are united.
This is the subject of Reinaldo Marcus Green’s new film “Bob Marley: One Love.” This is a standard biopic in a familiar structure. Rather than starting at the beginning, Green borrows an idea from the Johnny Cash biopic, “Walk the Line,” by showing a little snippet of the ending upfront. The film opens on Marley right before his famous peace concert in 1978. This is a direct parallel to “Walk the Line,” which opens with Johnny Cash sitting backstage right before his live performance at Folsom Prison. Both scenes even show pitiful producer characters asking the singers not to go up at the last minute.
The comparisons don’t even end there. One must wonder if there is a biopic template circulating in Hollywood. The most famous and often parodied scene from “Walk the Line” shows Joaquin Phoenix as Cash playing gospel music for an unimpressed record producer. When he’s shut down, he starts playing some originals that are so good the producer has no choice but to sign him. The same thing happens in “One Love.” A young Marley plays some songs that the producer doesn’t like, and just as he leaves the studio they start playing the classic reggaeton sound they became famous for.
Pointing out that a story follows a formula is not a valid criticism. Every film follows the conventions of its time. However, once we recognize the patterns, it is helpful to evaluate whether or not that pattern fits the real-life individuals that these films claim to represent. In “Walk the Line,” this pattern matches up with the melancholy tone of Cash’s songwriting. In Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis,” the psychedelic pace reflects the dizzying amount of fame that Presley achieved. In “Bob Marley: One Love,” the style seems off.
The political aspects of the film are so diluted they seem irrelevant. The Rastafarian attitude of peace and love is displayed, but it seems to amount to very little. The film focuses heavily on Marley’s peace concert, an event in which the leaders of the two rival political parties of Jamaica went on stage and shook hands. What it didn’t show was the critical failure of this gesture. Political violence increased in the years after the concert.
Where peace fails, there is always a little bit of hope that maybe it will work soon. Children the world over will still get to wake up in this strange world hearing the voice of a very well-meaning man telling them that it's going to be alright.
By Luke Morris