bob marley movie review

bob marley movie review

Analyzing the Impact of Bob Marley Through Film: A Critical Review

1. Introduction: Bob Marley’s Cultural Legacy

His work remains relevant to debates regarding globalization, race, ethnicity and popular culture analysis. The year 2005 saw a sharp rise in documentaries about Marley. At least five documentaries devoted to Marley were released during this year: Steffens and Cheff’s Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley’s One Love and his fusion of music, politics and identity in Jamaica, Diblasi and Simenauer’s Africa Unite, Swaby and Myers’ The Legacy of Music, Bowles’ Time Will Tell, and Bob Marley: The Legend. By 2011, the Marley presence in film extended to two feature length documentaries: Kevin MacDonald’s Marley in April and Marley, the same-titled movie by Jonathan Demme’s in May. Not content with the rather large shelf of documentaries on Marley, his biographical presence was recently added to the margins of two feature-length films; Moneyball, directed by Bennett Miller in 2011, and the 2012 documentary The Big Parade.

Documentary films on Marley frequently present him as a pop-culturally significant figure, with a rare talent of being able to inspire and inform different audiences around the world. The best Marley documentaries manage to highlight his many stunning achievements as a viable world artist while shedding light on the man behind the music and myth. They are replete with footage of him providing sketches of his life while illuminating the inspiring image he has come to occupy. Academically or culturally inclined scholars might seek to find Marley’s iconicity in the reggae film. But many other opinions about Marley and his cultural meaning are difficult to ignore. Views may range from his mom’s Christian ones to understandings of Marley as a nationalist symbol in Jamaica, to finding anything meaningful from twenty of Bob Marley’s songs, and to recent post-feminist readings.

2. Exploring the Representation of Bob Marley in Film

The documentary describes Bob Marley as “Bob Marley, the man who brought a new sense of purpose and a new kind of music to pop”. Controversial sentiments from modern cultural historians may question this, but certainly, Marley is an all-pervasive figure within film visual media. Surprisingly, he is a key character within a number of feature films as well as frequently exploited in shorter format documentaries. Indeed, the range of formats and the content released since his death at the height of his powers make Marley one of the most accessible figures from modern cultural history. There are few significant differences between 2010 and 1980, with regard to the dissemination of popular culture, considering change in delivery systems. Marley documentaries and film are still ubiquitous and the musician is apparently as cool now as he was then.

There is no scarcity of reggae music in the documentary about Bob Marley’s short but influential life. There is even the odd muso star – older brother Ziggy Marley reflects wonderfully, about childhood memories and the Millfield exhibition of his father, but, refreshingly, without the fawning one might expect, “…he was my father and I was two years older than I am now! He smoked a big spliff and then died of cancer 32 years before I said that!” But it is virtually impossible to listen to a reggae documentary without hearing Bob Marley. Perhaps the same can be said of listening to reggae! Big Smile. The documentary describes Marley as ‘cool’ and fast forward through a series of frames interspersed with sound-bytes of iconic reggae tunes. Wonderland, when considering the impact of ideas in contemporary popular culture.

3. The Influence of Bob Marley’s Music on Soundtracks

The high point of Marley’s impact on film soundtracks was reached in 1992 with the release of the film ‘Bob Roberts’. This satirical attack on American politics used Marley’s music in a very creative way. The director Tim Robbins chose Marley’s Greatest Hits album as he considered the lyrics to be the most ‘inflammatory and possibly anti-authoritarian both musically and lyrically’. From the point of narrative construction, film soundtracks are all ‘additional elements that have been grafted on to the alien body’. Acting like filters, directors select from music stock reservoirs those titles that fit better the story being told. Starting from the end of the 60s, the decoding and evocative properties of the soundtracks have gained an ever-increasing interest. While both the classic and the pop-rock sectors seem to have forgiven the creation of hybrids, with commercial production clearly privileging the most famous and consensual episodes of rock, alternatively just using trendy currents of specific musical events, modern art of directors who come from video and advertising has often been successful in rebuilding lost connections.

Ames argues that music has always been a key element of film in creating moods and drawing a response from audiences. From this perspective, it is clear that the power of Marley’s music has made it attractive for use in film soundtracks. Songs from all periods of his recording career are used both in the films and television specials that have been created about Marley himself, and also in other films and television programmes covering a range of subject matter. Not surprisingly, Marley’s music predominantly appears in films with themes of social concern and in films with a Rastafarian or religious theme. It is in these films that the music and accompanying lyrics are most appropriate as they reflect the beliefs of the singer, that art should be for social change and not simply for entertainment.

4. Social and Political Themes in Bob Marley Films

The limitations of the recent wave of Bob Marley films lie in the trajectory, lenses, and ultimately the social and political themes they present. The overwhelming pattern is that little that is new is told of Bob Marley in the film, and instead a standard narrative is offered to their subject matter, drawing on Bob Marley’s well-documented life and times. These films fall back on readily available networked relations in the media and the use of reliable collections of footage which are taken from what could be labeled as archives of the media spectacle on the life of Bob Marley. These films have little inclination to attempt the business of reading and excavating the complex known about or unknown ideas directed by Bob Marley in the direction of today and show Bob Marley differently, instead offering a superficial portrait of Bob Marley that distances any one account from exterior representation. In so doing, allowing a melting pot of representations to be freely sampled, if not designed for the expectations of viewers. With money spent on film productions and the marketable name of Bob Marley and his image, due attention can and should be paid to a more substantial grasp of the great significance of Bob Marley.

In 1993, the first feature documentary on Bob Marley, Time Will Tell, was released. Over the past decade, Marley’s life and music have been the subject of eight feature documentaries. Recently, there has been a resurgence in interest in Bob Marley, with a spate of new biopics and documentaries. This paper considers key trends amongst feature-length films that have been devoted to the subject of Bob Marley. The paper argues that the films under consideration frequently present Bob Marley in a consistent pattern which aligns with popular representations of the singer. This naturalizing of Bob Marley in film has limitations and further reifies the incorporation and selective repackaging of Bob Marley’s ideas and principles.

5. Conclusion: Bob Marley’s Enduring Relevance on Screen

There is little question about the sociological and cultural relevance of both the man and his music, so it is not surprising that a number of films, both short and feature-length, as varied and eclectic as they are numerous, have attempted to explore the nuances and cultural consequences of the life and times of Bob Marley. Moreover, decades of roots rock reggae, owing much to his charismatic stage presence, successful songwriting, and the cultural politics of his hybrid aesthetic stance, find themselves inexorably linked into a social action legacy. Indeed, his legacy is being remarkably sustained in new digital, mixed media forms. Marley the Prophet and Marley the multi-million dollar industry capitalist celebrity all emerge largely in films, videos, and TV documentaries. Is the charismatic Rastafarian, dreadlocked, defiant ghetto youth really a voice and harbinger of the reparations movement of the late 20th and early 21st century?

Over thirty years after his death, the surprising and enduring relevance of Bob Marley in the minds and hearts of people around the globe was underscored by several hours of international live broadcast to more than one billion viewers of a mega-concert on May 11th, 2001. Marley’s lyrics, his flowing locks, his ability to spit defiantly in the face of the mighty, demonstrate a power which is, in the post-September 11 world of divide and rule consumerist globalization, increasingly resonant.