03-21-2008, 11:38 AM
I caught a screener of this at Cal. It's a documentary of the 60th B-day celebration of Bob Marley, where the Marley clan held a concert of 350,000 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 95. It wasn't the final cut, so temper that in my comments.
The doc is uneven, mostly because it tries to tell too many stories. There's the Marley sons and there take on their father and Ethiopia. There's Rita, Marley's widow, and Cedella, his mom. There's this unity symposium, headed by Danny Glover. There's the opinions of the youth at the symposium, alongside Angelique Kidjo and Lauren Hill. There's Haile Selassie's granddaughter and some great historic footage of Selassie making speeches, standing on an unexploded Italian shell, feeding lions by hand - some interesting stuff. There's a 70-year-old rasta from Jamaica, with patois so thick that even I had to cheat with the subtitles a few times, making his pilgrimage to Zion. There's historic footage of Bob. And there's the concert.
The filmmaker leaned way too heavily on some video effects, perhaps to make it appear more stoney, but it was really distracting (give me wobbly cinematography over that any day). The rasta pilgrimage is great - quite moving - as is the historic stuff. I've seen a lot of historic Selassie and Marley stuff already, of course, but this film had some I hadn't seen, so that was cool. The symposium gets bogged down in it's own rhetoric. Sure, unity, sure teach the youth, but how? The filmmaker also relies on inserting Marley riffs to give the film a boost - that works, but it's rather transparent. The concert footage is ok. Damien shines as the most innovative child of Bob. If you don't know the different brothers, they can be difficult to distinguish. Too much time was spent on Ziggy.
All in all, I wasn't as moved by it as I hoped to be. I doubt it would be of too much interest to anyone not into reggae, african history or black politics.
The doc is uneven, mostly because it tries to tell too many stories. There's the Marley sons and there take on their father and Ethiopia. There's Rita, Marley's widow, and Cedella, his mom. There's this unity symposium, headed by Danny Glover. There's the opinions of the youth at the symposium, alongside Angelique Kidjo and Lauren Hill. There's Haile Selassie's granddaughter and some great historic footage of Selassie making speeches, standing on an unexploded Italian shell, feeding lions by hand - some interesting stuff. There's a 70-year-old rasta from Jamaica, with patois so thick that even I had to cheat with the subtitles a few times, making his pilgrimage to Zion. There's historic footage of Bob. And there's the concert.
The filmmaker leaned way too heavily on some video effects, perhaps to make it appear more stoney, but it was really distracting (give me wobbly cinematography over that any day). The rasta pilgrimage is great - quite moving - as is the historic stuff. I've seen a lot of historic Selassie and Marley stuff already, of course, but this film had some I hadn't seen, so that was cool. The symposium gets bogged down in it's own rhetoric. Sure, unity, sure teach the youth, but how? The filmmaker also relies on inserting Marley riffs to give the film a boost - that works, but it's rather transparent. The concert footage is ok. Damien shines as the most innovative child of Bob. If you don't know the different brothers, they can be difficult to distinguish. Too much time was spent on Ziggy.
All in all, I wasn't as moved by it as I hoped to be. I doubt it would be of too much interest to anyone not into reggae, african history or black politics.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse