Bob Marley: One Love (Green, 2024)

Written by Tom Augustine.

Looking back on the last few decades of cinema, it’s hardly a surprise to find the musician biopic subgenre in the dire state that it’s in. Like Marvel movies, Disney properties and the like, the days of complex and artistically ambitious biopics like Amadeus or I’m Not There are largely a thing of the past (give or take an Elvis), to be replaced by the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody or Judy – simplistic, easily digestible summaries of the key points of a great artist’s life, closer in style to a Wikipedia page than the cinematic greats. The enormous success of these films feels closely linked to the sense of IP maximisation they carry – these artists come with a built-in audience of die-hard fans who are all too happy to shell out for a film that treats their favourite musician with the level of reverence we typically reserve for religious figures (something the estates of the artists, who are usually involved in order to secure music rights, will be all too happy to accommodate). If the edges of the artists are sanded off, that’s okay – just as we don’t look for complexity in our superheroes or our Star Wars characters, we don’t need them for our musical icons either. The result is something corporatised and mass-marketed, often barely reflecting the person or the music at all. Freddie Mercury, Bowie, Whitney Houston, Bob Marley – these are cultural icons whose work was radical, and whose art reshaped the culture as we knew it. The biopics that get made about them aren’t interested in replicating that effect, only in skating along in their wake (the best of the recent lot, Elton John biopic Rocketman, at least had the savvy to be a musical). 

Bob Marley: One Love is a film that very much fits this mould, the kind with enough obvious biopic signposts to make the writers of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story cringe in defeat. Fleet at 105 minutes, the film is more of a Bob Marley-flavoured fairytale than any kind of accurate depiction of the truth of the man. His politics, his religious views, his extramarital relationships, anything that might prove alienating to an adoring audience has largely been stripped back. In One Love, Marley moves through space as one imagined Jesus Christ did among the apostles – when Marley strikes another man in rage, he does so with a kind of holy retribution. Marley is a giant in music, a genuine one-of-a-kind, world-changing type of artist, and One Love does nothing to diminish that image even slightly. Even moments of down-to-earth humanity, like a tender reunion between himself and estranged wife Rita (Lashanna Lynch) in London are treated with a kind of quiet awe. Perhaps this is accurate – there haven’t been many quite like Marley, and the message he preached with his music certainly continues to inspire a messianic fervour. But anyone seeking further insights into what made him tick will likely come away disappointed.

King Richard director Reinaldo Marcus Green follows up the film responsible for Will Smith’s Oscar with another biopic about a remarkable figure of the 20th Century. One Love is a safe and aggressively sanitised take on the life of Bob Marley, but coasts along easily enough due to the power of the man’s music and likeable performances from leads Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashanna Lynch.

Talented British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir plays Marley, capturing his life during the feverishly intense creative period of the mid-seventies up to his death in 1981 at 36. Ben-Adir, so promising as Malcolm X in One Night in Miami, further demonstrates a chameleonic ability to sink into the personae of some of our most important cultural figures (though many are more to likely recognise him as one of Ken’s fellow Kens in Barbie) and generally make it feel like more than an impersonation. At first, Ben-Adir’s performance teeters up against parody – and Marley is an incredibly easy target for that – but as One Love continues Ben-Adir finds his groove, creating a Marley-adjacent figure that feels like an interpretation rather than a bland recreation. Even more compelling, though, is Lynch as Rita Marley. A highlight in films like No Time To Die and The Woman King, Lynch hasn’t quite found the role that maximises her many talents just yet, but here she swallows entire scenes whole with a simple glance or a meaningful gesture. Saddled with the hardly-glamourous role of ‘long-suffering wife’, a staple in the musician biopic, Lynch keys into an emotional vulnerability and steadfast patience that suggests roiling oceans of feeling below the surface. It contains trace similarities to another undersung supporting performance of the wife of a troubled genius, Penelope Cruz’ recent work in Ferrari. Both are fiery turns that suggest the potential for better films that could exist had they favoured the spouse’s point of view (for an example of how to do that well, check out Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla). 

It is hard to quantify One Love as a ‘good’ film – it is far too rote, too safe and obfuscatory to be considered as a work of deep quality – and yet surface pleasures exist in the watching. There is no denying the earthy, magnetic power of Marley’s music, the full effect of which can be felt pumping through powerful cinema speakers. One Love cannily doles out deep cuts and minor classics at first, building to the Big Ones as we race to Marley’s climactic Jamaica peace concert. When the opening notes of ‘Jamming’ or ‘Three Little Birds’ finally emerge, the rush is undeniable. It seems minor, too, but there’s no denying the atmosphere of real locations – an element we took for granted but has been lost in massive productions relying almost solely on greenscreens – and there is joy to be had in merely following along with the Marley crew as they traverse Jamaica’s countrysides or a perfectly rendered Seventies London. There is an undeniable vibe of fun to be had in watching One Love with an audience, singing along to ‘Redemption Song’ and ‘Exodus’. The quibbles never go away, but during the watching, it’s fairly easy to be reassured that every little thing will be all right.

Bob Marley: One Love is in cinemas now.

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