“Marley” is a documentary movie by Oscar wining director Kevin Macdonald about the life and career of the most important musician in the history of reggae music.
The documentary figures Bob Marley through numerous interviews with friends, colleagues, and family members, unpublished footage and archival concert material. His charisma, the influence on music history he had and his social engagement are still a fascination to many, even thought the 11th May will mark 31 years of the musicians death.
The movie had full support by the Marley family and gives insight into biographical information, from birth of Robert Marley 1945 to his early death in 1981. Tracing his life from the forestlands of Jamaica’s Saint Ann Parish, to the ghettos of Trenchtown and upper-class Kingston the film brings anecdotes of musicians life culled from many interviews and archival footage that give a feel for places and times that influenced the music of Bob Marley.
The making of this movie was marked by many dissents. In the beginning of 2008 Martin Scorsese announced the production of it and it was supposed to premiere on 6th February 2010, Marley’s 65 birthday. After Scorsese withdraw from the project, Jonathan Demme took over who eventually dropped the movie, according to media reports, because of creative disagreements with producer Steve Bing. In the end, the movie was directed by Kevin Macdonald and premiered 20 April this year.
Although movie critics stated that the documentary gives interesting detailed insight into the life and music of Bob Marley, they also criticized the amount of information about Jamaican music, politics and the Rastafarian movement that could be interesting only to insiders. However, the $260.000 that the movie made at the box offices in the premiere weekend showed that Bob Marley’s flame of fame is still burning.