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Calling a documentary film about Bob Marley ‘Marley’ may not be creative, but that it’s a sufficient title serves as testament to the reach and scope \u2014 artistically, politically, inspirationally \u2014 of Robert Nesta Marley’s 36+ years in this world. And it’s a film covering the bases, places, and faces that shaped one nation’s national treasure.<\/p>\n
Director Kevin Macdonald can be forgiven if Marley<\/em> has one to many aerial sweeps across the verdant hillocks of Jamaica, because the conceit he chooses is a good one: Marley<\/em> is a travelogue of a life, of a person definitively tied to a particular place and culture \u2014 and perhaps most importantly, its people. Thus does Macdonald take great care framing interview footage with Marley’s mother and children, with Rita Marley and Bunny Wailer (extremely gentle and vibrant souls, respectively), with Jimmy Cliff and childhood friends, with Marley’s lawyer and one of his last nurses. Macdonald’s appreciation of each person as an individual rather than just as a means to information livens up what might otherwise have been historical exposition tying together bits of concert footage.<\/p>\n There’s plenty of concert footage, of course \u2014 and it makes you want to go seek out more \u2014 but the music (not all of it Marley’s: Macdonald provides a tour of the sonic environment in which Marley was immersed) is not relentless. Moviegoers interested solely in Marley’s music might easily get annoyed with all of the Errol Morris-style talking heads. But Macdonald shows more interest in creating a primer on the person than on the music, and the uninitiated will come away with a better understanding of the broad strokes of Marley’s life than of his music, what with more screen time dedicated to (e.g.) Jamaican politics and power struggles than to the development of reggae.<\/p>\n Any document of Marley’s life will inevitably include coverage of the man, his herb, and his women; but Macdonald doesn’t go in for salaciousness, showing far more interest in Marley’s attachment to Trench Town, his work ethic and militancy, his difficulty trusting people, life at 56 Hope Road, etc. Along the way we encounter Haile Selassie I (who Marley regarded as the reincarnation of Christ), Robert Mugabe (back when he was a lot more likable), Miss World 1976, and a c. 1980 American fan base that was almost exclusively white but beginning to expand just as the cancer takes its toll. It all makes for a story majestic in scope and saturated in quirky color — a story that helps inform our understanding of Marley’s music and lyrics.<\/p>\n If there’s a weakness, it’s that Macdonald may have been too taken with the breadth of the material to give the story a focus that might sink the hook in us extra deeply. It seemed just such a hook was being dropped in the water in the film’s opening scene, which takes us not to the man, his music, or even his country, but to a brief tour of a slave way station in Ghana and its “Door of No Return,” with a reminder that about 60 million Africans were forced from their homeland through such doors. From there we’re shuffled off to Bob Marley in concert, on top of the world and contributing to a lifting of global consciousness. With such a juxtaposition, soon followed by a brief discussion of ‘Marley’ as being considered a white surname until Bob turned that completely on its head, we appear headed toward social commentary \u2014 but Macdonald cuts bait, and even the overt politics in the film’s third act are fed to us scrapbook-style.<\/p>\n But Macdonald’s subject carries a lot of weight. And that subject inevitably comes back to the music, which is great and sounds great (the filmmakers have done a nice job pushing up the bass), enough to satisfy the soul of even those who have no thoughts on Bob Marley deeper than dreadlocks and ganja and jammin’.<\/p>\n The success of Marley<\/em> is that novice and fan alike come away with a sense of the man and his music, and of the milieu that shaped them both. Seeing Marley<\/em> doesn’t make you an expert on Jamaica or reggae, but you’ll come away knowing more about each after hearing a historical tall tale about both and so much more.<\/p>\n
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