FILM REVIEW: Marley

10 August 2012 - 02:29 By Tymon Smith
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Bob Marley grew up as a shy, music-obsessed child who was often teased about being of mixed race
Bob Marley grew up as a shy, music-obsessed child who was often teased about being of mixed race

In this almost two-and-a-half-hour documentary about Robert Nesta Marley , director Kevin Macdonald had the official sanction of the Marley family.

Director: Kevin Macdonald

Cast: Bob Marley, Rita Marley, Bunny Wailer, Ziggy Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Chris Blackwell, Lee Scratch Perry

So while there is very little critical assessment of the man's legacy here, there is a rich collection of archive, family interviews and concert footage tracing the singer's all too brief 36 years before his death from cancer in 1981.

Beginning with his birth in 1945 in the village of Nine Mile, Macdonald examines how Marley went from a shy child teased about his mixed race to a music-obsessed teenager in Trench Town in Kingston.

Macdonaldtracks how Marley started out by working on "do-overs" of American soul songs for the legendary Studio One producer Clement Coxsone Dodd before becoming a committed Rastafarian and front man of The Wailers.

Thanks to their collaboration with Island Records' Chris Blackwell - the film notes - the group took the world by storm in the 1970s and led the reggae explosion.

Along the way Marley smoked a lot of marijuana, played a lot of soccer, fathered 11 children with seven different women and survived an assassination attempt.

Macdonald's approach is not poetic or ambiguous. This is a traditional, epic documentary that follows its subject's life through archive and interviews with the various people - who are natural storytellers - in Marley's life.

To see Marley trance-like, energised and dancing like a whirligig at the infamous Jamaican peace concert where he united the leaders of the island's rival political parties on stage, is as close as possible to understanding why Marley's presence as much as his music was central to his global success.

Marley's god-like status combined with his essentially gentle nature mean he is still forgiven by many for his transgressions - even his long-suffering wife Rita laughs off the idea that she might have been hurt by his affairs.

By the end of the film, as we watch the singer's decline in the wake of incurable cancer and his funeral procession, accompanied by the haunting tones of Selassie in the Chapel - it is hard not to feel a strange mixture of despair that Marley is no longer with us and joy in the music that he left behind, which continues to unite people across the globe.

'Marley' is at cinemas nationwide

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