Butler's Cinema Scene

“MARLEY”  My rating: B- (Opening May 17 at the Tivoli)

145 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Can it really have been more than 30 years since Bob Marley died of cancer at age 36?

Watching “Marley,” the exhaustive (2 hours and 25 minutes) and exhausting new documentary on the man and his music, one is stunned by how much Marley accomplished in a few years of recording…and by what more he might have given us had he lived.

Kevin Macdonald’s film benefits from what seems to have been total access to Marley’s family, friends, fellow musicians, recordings and concert footage. And it has been superbly photographed – no travelogue on Jamaica has ever captured that island with such rich colors and tactile detail.

As for Bob Marley himself, the film nails his charisma and his musical genius.

But regarding the man behind the icon…well, that’s a much iffier proposition.

For all the information this film contains, Marley the man seems just out of reach, elusive.

Part of that is because Marley apparently did very few TV interviews. There’s just not a lot of footage of him talking.

So we must rely on the memories of others – and Macdonald (“Touching the Void,” “The Last King of Scotland”) has an army of talkers eager to hold forth: musicians like Lee “Scratch” Perry and Bunny Wailer; Marley’s wife Rita and his children; music producer Chris Blackwell; childhood friends and even the women by whom he fathered nearly a dozen children.

The film takes us to the one-room home in which Marley grew up in Jamaica’s interior, a world of poverty and superstition (Bob had his first band rehearse in a graveyard, figuring that if they could handle the ghosts and evil spirits they’d have no trouble with a live audience).

We hear his earliest recordings, and are witness to the rapid evolution of his reggae sound.

The film delves into the Rastafarian religious faith to which Marley was devoted and of which he remains its most noteworthy adherent (sorry, it still seems crazy to me – though you’ve got to give props to a religion that requires the smoking of marijuana).

What lingers longest after watching this doc is the music – the incredible melodies, the haunting vocals, and Marley’s astounding stage presence, which could turn a mere concert into a spiritual celebration.

| Robert W. Butler