You can’t separate the music and the message. Jamaica, 1976. Amidst armed political conflict that is affecting daily life in Jamaica, Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) announces he will perform at a concert, Smile Jamaica, devised to promote peace amongst the warring factions. While preparing for the concert, Marley, his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch) and members of his band are shot by assailants. Rita and Marley are hospitalised but survive and recover from their injuries in time for the concert. After performing, Marley, saddened that his own countrymen would try to kill him and his wife, shows the crowd his bullet wounds before walking off stage. He tells Rita to take their children to Delaware in the United States where they stay with his mother Cedella (Nadine Marshall) as he and the rest of his band venture to London. After struggling to come up with a new album concept, Marley asks Rita to rejoin him and the band in England where, inspired by the soundtrack of the film Exodus and their present situation, he and the band begin recording what would become their album of that name. It’s a big a hit and helps further popularise reggae and the Rastafari movement worldwide. The record company schedules a tour in Europe, Marley also aims for stops throughout Africa to inspire the people there. This leads to friction with Rita as she and Marley argue about his responsibilities and both his of their infidelities, with his constant companion Cindy Brakespeare (Umi Myers) a large part of his life. In addition to having given up on promoting peace back in Jamaica Marley also gets into an argument with manager Don Taylor (Anthony Welsh) over money … Sometimes the messenger has to become the message. It’s not easy making music biopics. The subject is customarily iconic, visually difficult to impersonate and embody and fantastically easy to get wrong because so many masters are being served, usually the family and estate who as here are the producers. The screenplay by Terence Winters, Frank E. Flowers, Zach Baylis and director Reinaldo Marcus Green commences at the height of political turmoil in Jamaica when Marley headlines a gig dedicated to peace in an island riven by gang wars. The damage inflicted is monumental: Marley’s realisation that music does not speak to power in his island home is deep and wounding, not to mention the physical damage caused by being shot. Otherwise, this is a clearly sanitised version of the subject’s life with Ben-Adir a rather poor substitute for the real thing who is portrayed going through the ups and downs, highs (and there are a lot of highs …) and lows, including marital and relationship woes. It’s not altogether his fault – the lack of similarity and the sheer inimitability are complicated linguistically by the extensive use of Jamaican patois, making this distracting from scene to scene. The overwhelming series of ironies besetting peacemaker Marley from the racial violence requiring machine gun protection to his own immediate subjugation by business versus his creative urges are laid out well. When he gets to England, that bastion of racism and master versus servant, its desperate dullness and weather provokes him into his greatest burst of recording inspiration. It’s sad but this film never feels like it gets under the skin of its protagonist yet it has the familiar rise and fall, struggle, success and compromise contours of pop star biographies albeit this of course is a story in reality that concludes in a tragic illness and premature death, the ghost at the musical feast. It’s filled with two-dimensional characters in supporting roles and Marley himself isn’t fleshed out adequately for a miscast actor to persuade. A missed opportunity but the reggae is joyous, Mozartian in affect, as all of Marley’s fans already know without this official, authorised and not very informative history. One love, one heart, one destiny MM#4500 #660straightdaysofmondomovies
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