‘King Richard’ helmer Reinaldo Marcus Green chronicles Marley’s rise to fame and his attempts to bring peace through his music.

During a 1979 interview with Bob Marley, New Zealand journalist Dylan Taite asked the musician about his early exposure to different genres. Taite wanted to know if Marley had dabbled in rock or soul before settling on reggae. Marley rubbed his chin and fixed his gaze off camera as he considered the question. “I wasn’t really into dem tings,” he said, “I was really into spiritual music, you know, cause it get more revolutionized.” For Marley, music was a transcendent experience with political potential.

One Love emphasizes Marley’s role as an unlikely peace broker in post-colonial Jamaica, but it doesn’t fully engage with what that means. The film acknowledges the singer’s concerns with the country’s escalating political violence in the ’70s — a decade after gaining independence from the British — but shies away from exploring the collective psychic scars of that domination or the realities of a nascent national project.  

One Love embarks on a somewhat considered examination of those tenets. There are moments when the film burrows into themes of mysticism and spirituality to clarify the foundational beliefs of Rastafarians. Flashbacks to Marley’s teenage years (here the musician is played by Quan-Dajai Henriques) show how the religion offered the fledgling musician community and a family. Still, for the most part, Green’s film deals in love.

Love for his people guides Marley to organize a peace concert during a contentious election year. One Love opens with a press conference in the days leading up to the anticipated 1976 Smile Jamaica Concert. Eager newspeople wonder about Marley’s political affiliations (none) and if he fears holding this kind of event (no). But what they really want to know, and what the film ultimately aims to probe, comes down to one question: “Do you believe music can end the violence?”

For Marley, music was an encounter with the otherworldly that transcended earthly preoccupations like violence. His songs inspired a spiritual experience and his concerts functioned as a kind of communion. Ben-Adir’s finely tuned performance captures the mystical relationship between Marley and his music as well as his kinetic stage presence. The British actor (Barbie, One Night in Miami) approaches becoming Marley much like Kristen Stewart did Diana in Spencer. He roots his portrayal in specific mannerisms — closing his eyes, jerking his body about as if overtaken by a holy spirit and indulging in that crooked and knowing smile. The actor wholly conjures Marley’s charisma while also teasing the musician’s sense of isolation, stemming from a childhood marked by abandonment. His compelling performance enlivens a film that otherwise feels like it’s perpetually struggling to take off.

Still, the incident shakes Marley. The film jumps forward three months to show the singer exiled in London, where he and the Wailers begin working on a new album. Rita absconds to Delaware with their children and lives there with Marley’s mother (Nadine Marshall) until responsibility to the music brings her to Europe. Lynch’s portrayal of Rita — a fiercely independent woman with a strong sense of her beliefs — is inspired, a quiet, grounding counterforce to Ben-Adir’s moodier depiction. Rita tethers Marley and keeps her husband honest. It’s disappointing, then, that the film, for all its interest in love, doesn’t dig more deeply into Rita’s evolving desires.

The relationship between teenage Marley and Rita (the latter played by Nia Ashi) gives us a sense of the pair’s passionate youth. In flashbacks, we witness an endearingly timid courtship followed by an invigorating plunge into Rastafari history and culture. Older Rita is still self-possessed but, as written, there’s a distance that smooths the edges, turns her into a saintly figure and saps the character of the charge that keeps someone married for decades.  

Even Marley, whom the film is smart enough not to strip of complexity, can feel flat at times. The screenplay carefully circumvents the more complicated threads of the musician’s life — notably the extramarital affairs that made him a father to 11 children — by offering other female figures just brief appearances. Their faces flash across the screen as Marley makes himself at home in London, and later as he tours throughout Europe facing rapturous crowds. But these formal gestures aren’t substantial enough to support a crucial emotional moment in the film. It’s in Paris, after a show, when Marley and Rita fight about old resentments and new problems. The scene is grippingly performed by Lynch and Ben-Adir, but its revelations are jarring because of inadequate setup.