Trouble Man – The Last Years of Marvin Gaye (1994)
Directed by James Marsh

One of the characteristics of a good documentary is that it makes you care about its subject regardless of whether you were interested in it beforehand. I have no idea if this film does that, as I was enormously interested in Marvin Gaye anyway. I would say, though, that if you are not interested in Marvin Gaye, then it is your problem and not the film's. What's the matter with you anyway? It's Marvin Gaye, he was the greatest!

Trouble Man traces Marvin's life from 1980 through his death in 1984, easily the weirdest and most tragic period in his very intriguing chronology. No endless prattle about what "magic" it was to make "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" or even the usual yammering about the "groundbreaking" sessions that created What's Going On. No, this is Marvin, kinda down and out, living in the UK and at his career's lowest ebb, battling back from drugs and other pitfalls, reclaiming lost time and lost money. The film, I think, was produced for the BBC in '94, but airs sometimes on A&E … it seems to be culled from original footage of a film that was begun while Marvin was living in Belgium, getting healthy and primed for the comeback that happened with "Sexual Healing."

It's awesome. We hear a serene Marvin talk candidly about his life and his mistakes, with a resignation that reinforces the tragic arc of his final years. Marvin seems to believe that he is incapable of escaping his natural tendency to fuck up everything that is good in his life. You get the sense that if his dad hadn't killed him, something else would have.

There is a ton of amazing footage: Marvin on stage, Marvin running on the beach or boxing in the gym, Marvin playing darts down at the pub, Marvin humbly introducing himself to some locals, Marvin playing drums, Marvin sitting down at a grand piano and kicking out some kickin' contagious R&B, Marvin rehearsing with his band. One of my favorite scenes has Marvin lying on a couch while the band locks into a groove, and he's just making these amazing, beautiful vocalizations, totally off the cuff, like it's no different from snoring for him. For some reason every time I think of this scene later, I remember Marvin having a big turkey drumstick in his hand, like Henry VIII, gluttonously chewing the flesh in between making these heavenly sounds. There's no turkey in it really, though.

There's another incredible scene where Marvin sings "The Lord's Prayer" a cappella in a church – this is what I play for anyone who seems skeptical when I frantically insist that Marvin Gaye possessed the single most truly God-given gift of any singer ever, including Jesus himself, whose own 70s output was far spottier. And the film does cover a little bit of history, but it's not the eye-rolling type of typical mythos you hear constantly repeated by VH1 and Rolling Stone, et. al. There's a great shot of an early Motown session, with everyone in the same room cranking out another hit, Smokey Robinson on vocals, Stevie Wonder five feet away on congas. Just amazing.

It's an incredible document, essential even, especially for anyone even remotely interested in Marvin to begin with. The film is intelligently edited, with great subtlety and a good balance between love for its subject and an eye on the larger picture. Tremendous, fantastic, I watch it many many times.

Review by Aames Adams