One Love: Bob Marley, the Gospel of the biopic (review)

Holes everywhere, the Bob Marley biopic stands up thanks to its inhabited interpreter and its mystical breath.

Remember the intro of the first episode of season 6 of Soprano, Members Only (“Early retirement” in French): a crazy intro in the form of montage-sequencepunctuated by the song Seven Souls where William Burroughs recites an extract from his novel The Western Lands describing the “seven souls” of the ancient Egyptians. You are probably wondering what they are doing The Sopranos and the trips of the junkie writer in a review of one Love, the biopic of Bob Marley? Don’t go away: in this account of the final years of the reggae icon’s life, the musician is obsessed with a Rastafarian prophecy proclaiming that great upheavals will come the year the “seven clash” – and, of course, In one Lovehe was diagnosed with cancer which would prove fatal to him on July 7, 1977. And if we told you that one of the screenwriters of one Love is a certain Terence Winters, pillar of the series and author of the script for this cult episode? What if we also told you that Michael Gandolfini, son of James and incredible in The Many Saints of Newarkalso appears in one Loveas if to once again pay homage to the great dead figures?

It will be objected, rightly, that the person responsible for the inclusion of this song is David Chase, who wanted to include it in the pilot of the Soprano. And it is difficult at the moment to know to what extent Winters’ work was preserved in the cinematic edit of one Love. Initially announced as lasting more than two hours, one Love finally reached 1h45 in the version presented to the press. In the meantime, this (small) occult connection allows us to put our finger on what works best in the film: its mystical breath, certainly authorized, validated, approved and produced by the Marley family. Bob is shown as a true Messiah, certainly a little neglectful in his family life but generous, altruistic, messenger of a cause greater than himself. At the end of the 70s, Bob Marley wanted to put on a final concert to bring peace to a Jamaica ravaged by war between two political factions, while following the precepts of his religion and spreading the good word of reggae throughout the planet.

What is especially striking is how the film is defined by its shortcomings – we are constantly left wanting more, as the film seems to carefully avoid any risk of roughness by erasing as many passages as possible. Basically, the film will not surprise fans of musical-pie biopics, over-locked by the entourage of the idol concerned, like Bohemian Rhapsody. The film alternates a double structure (the story of youth and a key concert) which recalls that of Walk the Lineexcept that the story of Bob Marley Begins stops after a while for no reason. We won’t see much of the astonishing musical broth of 50s Jamaica in which young Marley grew up, nor will we capture the source of his musical genius. Rather than attempting to invoke the voices of the dead, the film expresses the official voice of the survivors. It’s difficult, that said, not to vibrate when the music fills the cinema, channeled by Kingsley Ben-Adir – a completely jaw-dropping performance but really inhabited by the actor, fully invested in his role, right up to the erasure. Thanks to him, one Love captures a bit of the mystique that guided Marley in his art and in his life – yes, well, OK, we can even say that there is a “natural mystic blowing through the air“. A mysticism which is most expressed during the Rasta spiritual retreat scenes, led by Mortimer Planno, Bob’s Rasta spiritual advisor and played by the astonishing Wilfred Chambers. In short, one Love found one of Marley’s seven souls. It’s already that.

Bob Marley: One Love by Reinaldo Marcus Green, with Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, Micheal Ward… Released February 14.