MY wife and I went to see the late-night showing of “Bob Marley: One Love” on Wednesday night at Movie Towne. When I saw the trailer, I wasn’t satisfied that the lead actor, played by British coloured actor, Kingsley Ben-Adir, exhibited a natural West Indianness that the lead actor must possess.

I stated that opinion in my column of Tuesday, February 13, 2024, titled, “The Marley assassination attempt and the Rodney assassination.” Now that I have seen the movie, I stick to my original opinion, but to say his acting wasn’t superb is to be biased. His portrayal of Marley meets any standard for a lead actor. I do believe the movie is Academy Award stuff in the categories of best actor, best actress, best movie, and best screenplay.

If you are interested in understanding the people of the former European colonies, the strangeness of a country named Jamaica, and the irony of an icon that will forever remain a global icon, yet whose message does not resonate in his own country, then you have to see the Marley biopic.

If you are interested in how complex humans are, then you should see the movie. If you want to see how a humble, poor soul can rise to mega-stardom and leave his imprint on the world forever, then go and see how Marley did it. Most importantly, the film brings out aspects of Marley’s character that compel you to make him one of your heroes, but yet you wish he didn’t have the faults he possessed.

As you can see, I left out the category of best director because I don’t think Reinaldo Marcus Green did a superb job on Marley. Green is no doubt a very competent director, but I am not sure he did a sufficient study of the screenplay. One of the reasons for Green’s handling of the movie could have been the presence of Marley’s son and even his wife.

They may have insisted that certain aspects of Marley’s life be overlooked out of fear we might dilute our love for Marley. But Green failed to encompass the totality of Marley’s life, which a biopic must do. If I were to rate the movie, I would definitely say it is one of the best film biographies you will ever see.

Despite what son Ziggly and wife Rita, may have wanted left out and what Green failed to capture, the biopic of the global icon, Bob Marley, is great stuff. When a human is as talented as Bob Marley, the movie, despite whatever faults it may have, will be an outstanding achievement.

The poster for the movie reads: “First, he changed music. Then he changed the world.” When you digest those words and see what Jamaica, the Caribbean, and the Third World are today, and even the pro-Israel words that Marley’s eldest child, Ziggy, mouthed off recently, then, it becomes an exercise in profound psychology and philosophy to explain the status of Marley’s legacy today.

The biopic brought out the phenomenal stardom of Marley in Jamaica, where there was no one above him in stature. At a time when political violence was tearing Jamaica apart, and it looked likely to become a failed state, Marley, against all the odds, got the warring leaders, Edward Seaga and Michael Manley, to appear on stage together.

As I watched the actual footage of Manley, Seaga, and Marley together in the film, the bitter, piercing irony of Jamaica just jolted my mind. Here in the West Indies, on an island of two million descendants of slavery, most of whom were dark-skinned and working-class, two European-born Jamaicans of high middle-class status were violently fighting each other.

For an ephemeral moment, as I sat in that cinema watching that clip, I thought of the impossibility of that happening in Guyana. I believe if there wasn’t a Forbes Burnham in Guyana to obfuscate the white, European presence in politics of Peter D’Aguiar, then D’Aguiar and his party would never have achieved the traction it did in Georgetown, a feat that came so easily to Seaga and Manley in Kingston.

The Marley biopic simply confounds the mind as you sit in the cinema watching the greatness of Marley in Jamaica with his fantastic message, and you know his influence in Jamaican society has sadly waned in the CARICOM region today, particularly in his own country.

I grew up in a Hindu home and loved Hindu film music. I thought the Beatles wrote four great philosophical songs, and Burt Bacharach wrote phenomenal love songs. But the best composer of philosophically driven pop music was Bob Marley. He will never be eclipsed. He was simply a unique genius.