Marley

Kevin Macdonald’s epic documentary does right by the influential life and career of reggae icon Bob Marley. While it’s largely unflashy, meat-and-potatoes filmmaking, Macdonald expertly gives us everything we want to know, enough anecdotes we didn’t know and enough head-bobbing music to satisfy everything we wanted from a comprehensive Bob Marley documentary.

Marley (2012) dir. Kevin Macdonald
Documentary

By Alan Bacchus

As only a casual fan of Marley, I was surprised to know the lineage of the man. He was the son of a working class black mother and a wealthy white landowner, thus a ‘half-caste’ child dismissed by his father and bearing all the identification problems of being neither ‘black’ nor ‘white.’ Macdonald cleverly makes this Marley’s emotional throughline, including his childhood pains, which helped contribute to the monumental artistic and business successes of Bob Marley.

Macdonald takes his time tracing the kind of upbringing Marley saw as a child. His father, Captain Noval Sinclair Marley, who married Bob’s 18-year-old mother, is portrayed as the typical aristocratic plantation owner. At 60 years of age he impregnated a young woman but performed none of the assumed paternal duties.

Other formative events in Marley's youth include his ska influences in the early '60s and the creation of the Wailers in 1962 at age 17, which also then included a young Peter Tosh. Though he and his bandmates lived in near poverty, we get the sense that music was so ingrained in their culture that it didn’t take much money to convince people of their talent.

Marley’s introduction to Rastafarianism offers an informative film within a film. I admit, other than the dreadlock and ganja rituals, I knew little about the religion. We learn about the devotion to and sacredness of one’s body, as well as the curiously random deification of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Salassie as its God incarnate.

As time moves along and Marley's career grows, Macdonald constructs chapters of sorts covering the key aspects of his life and personality: his ‘womanizing’ persona, the burgeoning gang warfare in Jamaica, his deliberate political neutrality, his competitive nature and business savvy, which contrast greatly to the laid back culture of Rastafarianism and his assumed role as an international Jamaican ambassador. All of this supports Macdonald’s overarching theme of Marley’s internal struggles for peace, love and racial harmony within his community.

And we all know there’s an impending tragedy at the end of this story, although it's never referenced until Marley’s cancer is revealed to him, subliminally we can feel this emotional weight throughout the entire film. The final scenes that document the quick change from Marley on top of the world as a music superstar and father figure to millions of fans and idolizers, to the sudden realization that his body was riddled with cancer and at the short end of his life is devastating.

I’m convinced the British have a sixth sense for documentary technique. Arguably the best documentarians are British, as they're able to realize real-life subject matter with cinematic flare and gravitas better than anyone in the world. And Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void, One Day in September), at the top of this class, dutifully does justice to this great artist and important cultural story.

***

Marley is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Eone Home Entertainment in Canada.

STATE OF PLAY

State of Play (2009) dir. Kevin MacDonald
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren

***

The original British Mini-Series “State of Play” produced in 2003 was supposed to have been so good it got director David Yates the directors gig on the last two Harry Potter films, and possibly the final chapter, yet to be filmed. I confess not having seen it, so I can only judge on this filmed version without any context.

The big screen adaptation turns out to be a surprisingly conventional investigative thriller aided by heapings of Hollywood gloss from star power casting of Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck et al and esteemed writing triplicate of Matthew Michael Carnhan (‘The Kingdom’), Tony Gilroy (the Bourne Series, and ‘Michael Clayton’) and Billy Ray (‘Shattered Glass’, ‘Breach’).

Russell Crowe is perfect as the determined but flawed uber-professional newsman Cal McAffrey, an old-school Woodward and Bernstein type of journalist, who drives an old Volvo and shits upon his young coworker who writes for the paper’s ‘blog.’ McAffrey becomes embroiled in the case of a lifetime when the mistress of US Congressman and McAffrey’s former roommate, Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) is killed under mysterious circumstances. But it’s the young and energetic blogger Della Frye (Rachel McAdam) who breaks the case and runs with it. In an effort to help his old buddy McAffrey secretly aids in Frye’s investigation, securing evidence directly from the sources without police approval. As McAffrey digs deeper into the case larger stakes are revealed thus endangering his career and himself.

“State of Play” is one of those men-in-suits films - intellectual, career-minded power players with big egos, battling white collar crime in the political arena. Casting is king in these films. And heavy-weight thespians turn up in every scene – Crowe, Helen Mirren, Viola Davis, Robin Wright Penn all lend their weight to the seriousness. And Jason Bateman's fun cameo midway even adds a fresh bit of humour.

For two thirds director Kevin MacDonald executes a razor sharp thriller anchored with rock solid believeability and integrity by Russell Crowe. His foppish hair and portly swagger contrast well against his creative and quick thinking mind. The contradiction bleeds into his ethically controversial decisions he makes about the case.

Key to the conflict of the first half is the battle between the newspapers and the cops for the story. The newspaper guys, at every turn, seem to have an edge on the authorities, which results in a couple of key deaths. Unfortunately the moral and ethical responsibility of this on McAffrey and Frye never goes deeper than a light brush of the surface. And to the detriment of the film the cops are discarded from the plotting in the second half and become largely an ineffectual non-entity in the events.

Looking at the big picture, the film also suffers from the inherent predictability of the genre. Kinda like a blues song. No matter how modern you make a blues song, the pattern of notes is always the same. Same goes with “State of Play”, the payoff for a film like this rarely ever exceeds the excitement of the buildup. As the plot is resolved with traditional ‘hook and twist’ tactics the final emotional statement made is vacant and empty.

I think a story of this kind is best delivered by the television medium, which is why most critics will probably direct you to the mini-series after watching the film. The supreme example of the effectiveness of serialized television with this material is "The Wire" – HBO’s underrated yet supremely awesome cop series - which had five seasons to play out similar angles. With only two hours to work with “State of Play” ultimately feels entertaining in the moment but disposable in the end.

State of Play Ben Affleck Russell Crowe | Movie Trailers

LAST KING OF SCOTLAND

Last King of Scotland (2007) dir. Kevin MacDonald
Starring: Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy

***1/2

“Last King of Scotland” is a great film, but not just of because of Forest Whitaker’s, most-likely at the time of this review, Oscar-winning performance but because the film itself is great filmmaking.

The film is loosely based on a true story of Idi Amin’s relationship with a Scottish doctor in 1970. Idi Amin has just come to power in a violent military coup. Amin has the support of the people because of his charisma and oratory magnetism. A young idealistic Scots doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, has come to Uganda to escape the dreariness of his middle-class British life. Nicholas is naïve and innocent and the perfect candidate for Amin to manipulate, in fact, Nicholas chooses Uganda arbitrarily by pointing his finger at a spinning globe. Nicholas bandages Amin’s sprained wrist after a car accident, this chance encounter impresses Amin, who then asks him to become Amin’s personal doctor. He accepts.

Nicholas enjoys the luxurious life of Amin’s decadent compound. But he is isolated from the rest of the country and naïve to the atrocities Amin is inflicting on his people. Nicholas’s involvement with the dictator deepens, so much so that when he realizes the corruption he’s involved it, Amin refuses to let him go. His position is even more complicated when he becomes involved with one of Amin’s attractive wives. This sets up an intense final act, as Nicholas tries to escape during a hostage crisis, which saw an Israeli-hijacked plane land in Uganda.

Some of the credit of Whitaker’s performance must go to the director and cinematographer (the great Anthony Dod Mantle). Whitaker’s speeches are shot with long lenses, and crash zooms, complementing the intensity of Amin’s public performances. The film has the graininess and look of a 16mm documentary, which adds to the authenticity. The vibrant yellows, greens and reds burst out of the screen. The pacing increases throughout the film and is accompanied by a terrific African-beat soundtrack. Two scenes standout – the hypnotic scene when Nicholas seduces Amin’s wife (the editing of which reminds me of the end of “Apocalypse Now”) and the final sequence in the airport. The film doesn’t shy away from the gore, and showing the horrors of Amin’s brutality in graphic detail. Two specific scenes made me turn away from the screen.

Kevin MacDonald (“Touching the Void” and the Oscar-winning “One Day in September”) is a great British filmmaker, and along with Paul Greengrass and Michael Winterbottom, seems to have created their own “British New Wave” – a realist/global-conscious cinema-style. If this is MacDonald’s “Bloody Sunday”, perhaps will see him wooed to Hollywood like Greengrass.

This is one of the best films of the year and a must-see. Enjoy.