The thing about these endless big music biopics is, no matter how schmaltzly and hideously ‘authorised’ and not that great they may be, if you have a lead who is the spit of the subject and a baker’s dozen of planet-aligning bangers – which Bob Marley most certainly does – then you probably don’t need to worry about a thing.
And so to One Love’s first problem, which is that Kingsley Ben-Adir is too pretty-boy good-looking to play someone whose striking, but far from conventionally handsome face is as globally known as Marley’s. It’s not that he can’t act. Ben-Adir’s (and for that matter everyone in the film’s) patois is satisfyingly thick and convincing, plus he’s got the electrified stage dance down perfectly.
He has, previously, successfully pulled off both Barack Obama and Malcolm X. And yet even those two titans are not as instantly recognisable in the way of Bob Marley, who is what I would call market stall t-shirt famous.
We begin and end in Jamaica. The first time in the mid-70s, when Marley, already pretty famous, barely survives an assassination at his home. He splits for the safety of London, sees the Clash and begins to make the album, Exodus, that will go on to make him even more famous. Then, at the height of that fame, in 1978, he returns to Kingston to play the One Love Peace Concert, which acts as the film’s climax.
Now, you don’t get to be market stall t-shirt famous without a fair bit of historical airbrushing going on but… blimey, even considering his family were heavily involved in One Love, this is a very airbrushed Bob Marley. A Bob Marley who doesn’t need his own face on the sleeve of Exodus. A Bob Marley who stresses that he does not want to be paid for an African tour, he only cares that his band are.
A man who sits quietly at the back of the tour bus buried in a book about Haile Selassie and takes his cancer diagnosis, when it comes, with incredible calm. Who comes face to face with his would-be killer from the first act, and offers wizened, sagely forgiveness. And who sits by the fire playing Redemption Song to his beloved kids.Speaking of kids, his complex relationship with his wife Rita – they had, officially, 11 children, many of whom were conceived with different partners, but raised by the couple – is only briefly alluded to during an argument in which Rita (played brilliantly by Lashana Lynch) wallops him. The only sign of Bob’s own violent side comes when he beats his manager for siphoning off dodgy money, and even then it’s because such behaviour runs counter to the higher purpose, rather than because he’s checked his bank balance.
And boy, if you want music movie clichés, One Love has got ’em. The bit where blasé record company guy is walking out of the room, then is stopped in his tracks by genius (a flashback of the Wailers playing Simmer Down). The bit where an argument in the studio sparks a eureka moment and a legendary song (Natural Mystic, although this happens more than once). The world tour montage as the album flies up the charts and megastar parties come a-calling. This saintly Bob Marley, of course, soon sees through all of that.
The main point of One Love, I suppose, is to enrapture new generations and lead them to Bob Marley’s genius. Which they will find, because Bob Marley’s music is so good. Those that feel, as I did when I was very young, compelled to delve deeper into the man behind that music, however, will get a bit of a shock when they find a much more complex, interesting, and considerably more flawed three dimensional person than the one presented here.
