Mignon

Marley (2012)

I was lucky enough to see this film last saturday at my local cinema. Lucky because, according to wikipedia, this film is on limited release. Good thing my local cinema is a fancy art house cinema.

I’ve been a fan of Bob Marley’s music for a long time (it’s actually quite hard NOT to like his music), but I hadn’t really heard too much about this film before going to see it, other than it was a documentary with good reviews.

This film is a very full and interesting documentary of his life, his childhood, his beliefs, and his music, and how all those things entwined created the man he was.

There were a lot of interviews with various different people in his life: the stand-outs for me were Bunny Wailer, Rita Marley, Cedella Marley, and Cindy Breakespeare. Although, actually, I would have liked to have seen more interviews by Cedella Marley, as she seemed very affected by him, and the impact he had on her childhood. I wouldn’t mind reading a autobiography of her life.

There was a pretty much perfect balance of live performances, interviews with the people that knew him, and, of course, interviews with Bob Marley himself.

I only have a couple of mire complaints, one being that it felt like the film dragged on a little bit. Because, although very good, it was exhausting to watch. The other complaint is that I wish they’d spent more time on figuring which colour the subtitles should be against which background - sometimes they were a little hard to read.

Other than that, this film was very interesting, and definitely worth seeing.