When you write dat?
All ma life.
One Love is a film treatment of a period in the life of Jamaican reggae musician, Bob Marley. Reggae is the music of ‘da people’, according to the film. A rich Jamaican patois is used throughout, to very good effect, adding to the musicality of the film, alongside the hit songs.
Why make a biopic? Isn’t the music enough? Does it answer the question ‘who is da people?’ In a sense it does, leaning heavily into Marley’s notions of liberation through peace and unity, underpinned by Rastafarianism, a mystical Afro-centric religion that developed in the 1930s, as a response to British colonialism in Jamaica.
The mysticism and anti-colonialism are alluded to in figures on horse-back:Haile Selassie, believed by Rastafarians to be God incarnate and a white man wearing a pith helmet. There is a telling image of the child-Marley running in a ring of fire, during which the figure on horseback appears, as if to anoint him in his role.
Marley’s relationship with his wife Rita, one of The I Threes, his backing singers, features in a few scenes. There’s a separate film to be made about Rita and the other women in that music/liberation world.
We’re in the mid-1970s. War is everywhere. Ford is in the White House. Carter will follow. Direct Rule is introduced by Westminster into Northern Ireland. The Maguire Seven are wrongly convicted of possessing arms for the IRA. Star Wars begins filming. The Apple Company is formed. USA vetoes a UN resolution in support of an independent Palestine. Pol Pot is in power in Kampuchea. The Socialist Republic of Viet Nam is formed. The Band hold their farewell concert, The Last Waltz. Trinidad and Tobago becomes a republic. Jamaica is collapsing through civil war.
Bob Marley emerges from the island’s music scene, as a local messiah, preaching a message of peace and love, through his music. An assassination attempt drives him, the band and family members out of Jamaica. They set up in London. They slip into a city experiencing race riots and efforts at liberation, underscored with two-tone and ska beats and juiced by the songs of The Clash.
Marley fits right in.
As you’d expect from a bio-pic of a musician, there are standard scenes of childhood influences, being first discovered, becoming a public figure and superstar. Marley denies it in the film, though he lives as a prophet/saint/cult figure. After the sojourn in Europe, worn by the travails of the music business, personal and domestic challenges, he returns to Jamaica to live out his redemption.
His complicated, extended family gather around him for a campfire rendition of Redemption Song. A key scene, setting up Act 3 and the ending.
Marley’s One Love Peace Concert gesture in 1978, shows Marley at his most politically prophetic. He holds aloft the hands of two white men, political opponents, Michael Manley and Edward Seaga, in an appeal for peace and unity. The film tells the story of how two rival gang leaders, allied to the politicians, convince Marley to return to Jamaica and calm the violence.
Bono, a latter-day rock prophet/saint, mimics the gesture in linking the hands of David Trimble and John Hume for a final push ahead of the referendum on The Belfast Agreement.
One Love is not an account of a period of time or of a religion-political movement. It is a bright and engaging family homage to one of their own, taking the well-known arc of a contemporary pop star. Critics are not enamoured of it, saying the family had too much grip on it. They put up some money and Ziggy, Marley's son, kept firm hands on the production reins. As you might expect him to, when serving the legacy of a loved one.
Music made Marley. His celebrity chimes with an urge for liberation among European and American young people. That’s where the (cultural) dollar dominates, though the urge for liberation has been commodified, driven on-line and individualised. Marley, as a figure, is an instance of early globalisation, with pop culture bleeding from one region into a world-wide phenomenon. The scene with the gold record Exodus tells it.
Don’t expect depth and exploration. See the flawed documentary Marley (MacDonald, 2012) for that.
Colour, joy, pathos are there aplenty. Some context too. The standout scenes are music ones: exciting a local producer with their rendition of Simmer Down, a Skatalites song; discovering the impetus for the song Exodus in a film soundtrack by Ernest Gold, as the band listen to it through a fog of ganga smoke.
The human side of Marley is presented by his relationship with his children. He’s seen as a multiple father, rather than a hands-on one. He’s a nifty soccer player, seen in joyful scenes with band-mates and friends, who refer to him as ‘skipper’.
If you like reggae, you’ll like this. It won’t blow your mind, but taken with some herbal *, it will pass a glad evening.
This is a very watchable biopic, saved by its soundtrack.
The songs survive. Simmer down.
Recommended.
One Love, film, 2024, on general release
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8521778/?ref_=tt_mv_close
Simmer Down, Bob Marley and the Wailers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K09VQnrfHs
* tea
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