Bob Marley: One Love is a Phenomenal Film Despite Certain Critiques
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the polars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? — Psalms 137:1–4
WASHINGTON, DC — At a funeral, have you ever berated the hosting family because the obituary they wrote did not capture your view of the deceased? No, not ever? Exactly!
Unfortunately, this has been the mainstream critical reaction to Bob Marley: One Love, a musical film produced by the individuals most close to the Roots Reggae artist: Bob’s family. Included within One Love’s production team are his son Ziggy Marley, daughter Cedella Marley Minto and widow Rita Marley. What many of the film’s detractors fail to appreciate is that one’s survivors may choose to present a gracious picture of their loved one as a departing gift to the living — not necessarily as “hagiography” as one critic calls One Love.[1] It is not necessary that this obituary be exhaustive (or overly complex) to be meaningful or to have inspirational value.
Viewing what I call Bob’s second going home ceremony — i.e., One Love – was as important to me as attending a lifelong friend’s funeral. Bob Marley was a permanent fixture in our home growing up. My dad had all Bob’s albums in vinyl. But that wasn’t enough: he had all Bob’s albums in CD form too. This was all the justification I needed to hoard the CD versions of Bob’s albums in my bedroom, much to my dad’s dismay. In retrospect, I accept that listening to a skipping version of “Redemption Song,” damaged by your young child, can be off putting. Nonetheless, Bob’s legacy within our home was significant enough that I focused my Cornell University admissions essay on that same track: “Redemption Song.” In that essay, I credit my dad for gifting me formative spiritual and intellectual lessons through the music he shared with me, particularly Bob’s work.
For this reason, while some critics of One Love reference its “lack of depth,”[2] One Love took me through my coming of age; it made me reimagine my parents’ migration to America; and it guided me through the deep annals of the African Diaspora’s redemptive pursuits.
In One Love’s start, a young Bob — or Robert Nesta Marley — was gifted a Bible well before his wearing of dreadlocks. The Bible’s contents were to protect him as he relocated to a “government yard” in Trench Town, Jamaica. Although not a product of public housing, there were enough project buildings throughout Brooklyn, NY for me to relate to Bob as a child. In fact, the Fugees’ Wyclef Jean– who covered Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” in 1996 — replaces the song’s reference to “Trench Town” with a reference to “Brooklyn.”
Bob’s gift reminded me of the only two material gifts I ever received from my grandmother: a Bible and a copy of Jamaican-American Colin Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey. Similar to the way Biblical principles guide Bob’s character throughout One Love and informed his musical art in real life — so did spirituality guide me through very dark valleys and remains with me today, especially on life’s hills of success that often are too surreal to appreciate fully. Accordingly, I was pleased when the crux of One Love’s plot focused on Bob’s Exodus album. This is the same album that inspired a program at Cornell University I was fortunate to help organize on the Book of Exodus’ import to African people throughout the diaspora. This program was co-organized by Cornell University’s Black Students United and Hillel and hosted at St. James AME Zion Church, a recognized stop on the Underground Railroad during America’s antebellum period.
Throughout One Love, Bob and his family’s exodus takes them to Trench Town, Delaware, London, throughout Europe, Zimbabwe and back to the land of his birth, Jamaica. One Love’s setting crisscrosses the Atlantic Ocean in a way that would make most passersby seasick. Nonetheless, these cinematic transitions were executed in a way that well demonstrates Bob’s global citizen-like influence and his worldview. Most important to me: the film was a powerful presentation of how the concept of “Exodus” permeates throughout the African Diaspora in ways that promote — not only resilience — but redemption.
As mentioned, my personal exodus had a sojourn in Ithaca, NY. There’s an interview of Bob that I often reflected on during dreary college days when I experienced homesickness. In the interview, Bob states:
“My home is always where I am. My home is inna my head. My home is what I think about; that is my home. My home is not a material home out somewhere over there, y’know. My home inna my head.”[3]
This ability to recreate one’s home away from home is quintessential to the African diasporic experience. Fordham Professor (and fellow Cornellian), Tyesha Maddox, discusses this reality in a recently released book, A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity (UPenn Press, 2024), that examines how Caribbean women immigrated to New York City at the turn of the 20th century and developed a sense of home within (and with) the larger Black American community.[4]
One Love’s depiction of Bob Marley’s wife — Rita — temporarily separating from Bob and seeking a safer environment for their children in America, demonstrates this transnational phenomenon. One Love not only does an exceptional job at portraying Bob’s and Rita’s resilience through conflict-driven migration, but the film also documents the immense pain that often accompanies human resilience. In One Love, Black spirituality ensures survival through pain or — in other worlds — resilience. But above all, Black spirituality ensures liberation and elevation or — in other words — redemption.
In college, I read a book by theologian Gayraud S. Wilmore titled Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of Religious History of African Americans (Orbis, 1988). I found it particularly interesting that despite its title’s focus on Black people in America, there were references throughout the book to Africa, the Caribbean, and others throughout the diaspora. One of my favorite quotes within the book was from Saint Lucian poet and playwright Derek Walcott. Wilmore cites Walcott in a chapter titled “Survival, Elevation, and Liberation in Black Religion”[5]:
“What seemed to be surrender was redemption. What seemed the loss of traditions was its renewal. What seemed the death of faith was its rebirth.”
Not only was this quote immensely inspirational to me, but it was also from a Caribbean poet hailing from an island closer in proximity to my parents’ birthland of Dominica, than Jamaica or the United States. St Lucia and Dominica are so close in proximity that their countrymen share a closely related creole French language and cultural traditions unlike other English-speaking islands within the Caribbean. Nonetheless, the underlying theme of Walcott’s quote connects the African Diaspora in a way that transcends space, colonial boundaries, and cultural differences. In fact, Walcott’s quote can be appreciated universally despite noteworthy global fissures based on race and nationality. This was also one of Bob’s salient messages through his artwork and, certainly, is a reoccurring theme in his fantastic biopic One Love.
One Love’s most suspenseful moments are its depiction of Bob’s historic Smile Jamaica Concert (1976) and One Love Concert (1978). The Smile Concert occurs only a few days following a politically motivated, and unsuccessful, assassination attempt of Bob and his associates. Bob opens the concert reciting his “War” lyrics that mirror Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I’s October 1963 speech before the United Nations General Assembly. As I touched my wife’s stomach in the theater, the power of “War’s” basslines corresponded with synchronized rhythmic movements from our yet to be born son. This moment, during One Love’s Valentine’s Day release, triggered tears in my eyes. Similarly, this moment was emotional for Bob’s character who began to see his death through visions. Bob’s anxiety — stemming from Jamaica’s political violence — eventually drove the artist into exile and sparks a creative and spiritual journey that results in the creation of the Exodus album, a body of work TIME Magezine considers the 20th Century’s most important album. One Love proceeds to track Bob’s growth through exile until his exodus to Jamaica for his One Love Concert.
Bob achieves this full circle moment — which is symbolic of his new state of spiritual redemption — by fully giving of himself to his purpose. Going into the One Love Concert, Bob’s character notes that he no longer focuses on his life as “important” — rather, Bob has fully conceded that his life is “for the people.” For Bob, the vengeance and anxiety he may have felt, connected to the failed attempt to murder him, was merely a distraction from his life’s objectives. Through this spiritual awakening, Bob successfully “earns his death,” a state of being referred to by author James Baldwin in Fire Next Time. There, Baldwin notes:
“One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.”[6]
In One Love, you observe Bob’s negotiations with death and the outcome of this process essentially creates the legacy of Bob we celebrate today. One Love successfully takes us through this spiritual exodus of Bob effectively against the backdrop of a riveting (and meaningful) theatrical soundtrack.
To be fair, there may be warranted criticism of One Love. I would have loved for the film to fully develop characters outside of Bob and Rita. Peter Tosh’s and Bunny Wailer’s characters are some of those I have in mind. As present as Bob was in our household as a kid, so were Peter and Bunny. They created two of my favorite reggae songs: “Jah Guide” and “Blackheart Man” respectively. However, biopic movies are much more limited than biopic series. Maybe Netflix, Hulu, or some other platform will take up the challenge of developing One Love into a longer series, under the direction of the families of Bob and his closest associates. Hopefully, fans like me are not left “waiting in vain.” Until then, I hope One Love’s audience approach its limitations with grace and consider its underlying value as a celebration of Marley’s legacy and life through the eyes of those who knew him best.
[1] Derek Smith, Bob Marley: One Love Review: Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Hagiography of a Reggae Legend, SLANT (February 13, 2024), at https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/bob-marley-one-love-review-kingsley-ben-adir/
[2] Kate Walsh, Review: In ‘Bob Marley: One Love,’ we wait in vain for the essence of the man to materialize, Los Angeles Times (February 14, 2024), https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-02-14/bob-marley-one-love-review-kingsley-ben-adir-lashana-lynch
[3] See April 2, 2020 reference to quote in post on Bob Marley Estate’s Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/bobmarley/p/B-fZ4LypSfj/
[4] Tyesha Maddox, A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity (UPenn Press, 2024)
[5] Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Orbis Books, 1998) at page 270
[6] James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (Dial Press, 1963)
