Marley (15)

HHHH

Dir: Kevin Macdonald

Running time: 145 minutes

FROM world boxing champions to global leaders, there is no life so big it cannot be squeezed into a cinema screen. But how best to do it? Should a filmmaker go down the biopic route (Raging Bull, Gandhi), choose a straight documentary (Senna, Man on Wire), or throw the rule book in the shredder and have Cate Blanchett play Bob Dylan?

For this outstanding look at the life of reggae legend Bob Marley, Scots director Kevin Macdonald has opted to go old school. It's not that old school for Macdonald, whose Oscar-winning One Day in September was a painstakingly detailed examination of the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. It is, though, a change from Touching the Void, which mixed documentary and dramatised scenes to chart a perilous ascent on Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes.

Perceptive, revealing, and able to take as wide a view as possible of its superstar subject, Marley is a welcome return home for Macdonald after the mixed bag that was his last documentary, the YouTube-generated Life in a Day, and The Eagle, a swords and breastplates feature film set in Roman Britain that soared like a brick.

In his search for the roots of Bob Marley's inspiration, Macdonald opens his film at the Door of No Return on Goree Island, said to be the point of departure for countless Africans heading into slavery. As Macdonald's camera goes through the door, what was an exit into misery becomes an entry point to a concert stage, complete with fans cheering and the bright lights of promise. It's the first of many signs that we are in the hands of a born filmmaker, someone who can sum up a life in a few striking images where others might use reams of words.

Marley was born and brought up in St Ann, Jamaica, a place of no electricity, hard work and short odds on getting out. His mother was black, his father was a white government worker. Young "Robert" had a tough time fitting in because of the colour of his skin. As the film makes clear, it was not till he discovered Rastafari that he found his real place in the world. If St Ann was his start, the move to Trench Town at age 12 was the making of him as an artist. With options ranging from sport and crime to music, Marley picked up a guitar and got started.

After a tearalong opening section, Macdonald's film loses pace when it delves into Marley's formative years as a member of the Wailers. Doubtless there will be some in the audience who want to know the ins and outs of early production techniques, but not, one fancies, many. Had Macdonald lost some of this material he might have avoided coming in at an overlong 145 minutes. Even so, he still manages to mine a few gems from this period, like the fact that the band used to rehearse in the local cemetery at 2am; if they could do that, thought their manager, they'd never have stage fright.

Macdonald has a terrific cast of talking heads, stretching from Bunny Wailer and Marley's wife Rita, to two of his 11 children, Ziggy and Cedella. Among the film's executive producers are Ziggy Marley and Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, Marley's label. While having these two on board must have opened doors, it was still up to Macdonald to get the best out of his interviewees, which he does, using a mixture of charm, sensitivity (as when he's asking Rita Marley about her husband's infidelities), and smarts (he's immersed himself enough in the music to ask the musicians informed questions).

The risk in having so much access is that the film can tip towards hagiography. This one manages to avoid that, though for a long time the only criticism of Marley is that he was ultra competitive and not "lovey dovey" as a dad. But Macdonald, to his credit, does raise the girlfriend issue, with the women around Marley having contrasting views of his behaviour.

Macdonald plays the tale straight, charting Marley's progress from small gigs to 80,000-seat arenas, using a mixture of still photography, contemporary interviews and archived interviews with the man himself. There's nothing flashy, the editing is sedate. Macdonald knows that he has everything that matters in the film – the music, the man, and those who knew him best – and he only needs to order the material so that it can sing.

Short as Marley's life was, this was no easy task. As the excessive running time shows, Macdonald doesn't always make the right choices about what to leave in or cut out, but you come away from this film feeling that you have dipped in and out of not just one life but many, not just one man's personal history but the tale of a time, a place, a country and a style of music. Remarkable man, fitting documentary.