Bob Marley, the charismatic and controversial musician whose twenty-year career encompassed every style of Jamaican music from ska to reggae and whose songs expressed the sharp-edged emotionalism and political immediacy of revolutionary broadsides, is given exalted treatment in BOB MARLEY:
TIME WILL TELL, a peripheral documentary on the late musician that spends most of its running time glorifying Marley the icon rather than celebrating his songs and his life.
The voice of Bob Marley is heard announcing "This is my story" and, after an impressive animated interlude that looks like flowing Bob Marley and the Wailers album covers, the film settles into a cursory examination of Marley's tragically short life, from his early recordings until his struggle
against brain cancer, narrated by interviews with Marley, conducted at various points during his career. Marley's songs (including "Coming in from the Cold," "Trenchtown Rock," "Jammin," "No Woman No Cry," "Could You Be Loved," "Zimbabwe," "Lion of Judah," "Ambush in the Night," "Them Full Belly"
and "Forever Loving Jah") serve as commentary upon his life and his political and religious beliefs. The film ends with extensive footage of Marley's state funeral in Jamaica of May 21, 1981, over the song "Get Up Stand Up."
Director Declan Lowney liberally peppers BOB MARLEY: TIME WILL TELL with Marley's songs, and the late musician's passion and fire is conveyed in the urgency of his lyrics and the fervor of his performance, particularly on "Curfew/Burnin and Lootin'," "I Shot the Sheriff," "War," "Exodus" and
"Redemption Song." The power of these performances cuts through pretense and stridency like a pearl-edged hatchet felling a tree. As long as Lowney sticks to Marley's performances and his brilliantly lacerating songs, the film reveals the piercing genius of Bob Marley and the Wailers. But Lowney's
stance on Marley is devotional, his legendary status taken for granted. Although Marley and his songs nominally narrate the film, Marley is frequently shown in slow-motion glory, his head tossed upwards to the sky, his poses joyous and redemptive, the deification complete.
Lowney feels no need to explain in any detail the story of Marley's life, his influences and the Kingston slums of ganja and poverty. Marley, to Lowney, was born almost full-blown into the Kingston music scene, a reggae Christ who was crucified at the cross of cancer for the sins of mankind. There
are no markers or signposts for Bob Marley. BOB MARLEY: TIME WILL TELL glorifies Marley at the expense of the social milieu that formed reggae and the influences of other musicians upon the development of the music that Marley clearly and passionately loved. It would have been of great interest
too if Lowney had spoken with Marley's friends, band members, family and associates and shown Marley to have had some contact with other members of the human race, simply in order to dispell the impression left by the film that he fell out of the sky.
Marley's performances in BOB MARLEY: TIME WILL TELL evoke such power that the songs overcome any obfuscation that is thrown in the way by the director. In "Curfew/Burnin' and Lootin'" and "Exodus," Lowney sticks with the performance and Marley burns through like a blinding sun. But Lowney, for
most of the film, prefers to cut in news clippings of political events over Marley's songs, ruining the performance continuity and making the songs into psuedo-incendiary explosions that have reshaped history, akin to a pompous and over-bearing Michael Jackson MTV video clip. Wrapping these songs
neatly in a politically correct bundle blunts their power and diminishes their potency, transforming songs of transcendence into out-of-date songs of protest. "Could You Be Loved" and "War," two of Marley's most moving songs, are sabotaged in this way. Lowney is so dewy-eyed in reverence that he
can't leave well enough alone and allow Marley to speak for himself.
Since BOB MARLEY: TIME WILL TELL is basically preaching to the converted, new-comers to Marley's music will have to look elsewhere--to his albums--to appreciate his brilliance. leave a comment
