Bohemian Rhapsody

My point is, I’ve never been too emotionally invested in Queen, and all I ever really knew about the band until seeing this film was 1) Freddie Mercury died of AIDS 2) The other guys were Brian May and Roger Somebody 3) Pete Townsend is from The Who.

The fact that I include #3 at all shows you my lack of investment. I don’t think of Queen as a force that shaped my life. I think of it as something that might trip me up if I ever actually get called to appear on Jeopardy!.

But while watching this movie, I discovered something surprising. Despite my popular-music-impoverished background, I still somehow know every Queen song ever. Even songs I had no idea were by Queen, even songs I didn’t know the titles of previously, I still somehow recognized and loved during this movie.

I mean, everybody knows Queen did “Another One Bites the Dust,” “We Will Rock You,” “We Are the Champions,” “Under Pressure” (actually I didn’t know that until my husband pointed it out last week), “Radio Gaga” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” but apparently they also did ninety thousand other songs, too, that even I recognize the moment I hear them.

Listening to two solid hours of infectious hits makes for a pleasant, energizing experience even if the excuse for bringing them together is a somewhat mediocre movie.

Mediocre is maybe an unfair way to describe this movie. I loved the experience of watching. Uneven is more like it. Two words that kept popping into my head over and over again were “shallow” and “manipulative.” My husband had a similar take. But see, the thing is, yes, the film glosses over some stuff, and, sure, just from watching, you can tell it must be oversimplified and contrived. Nevertheless, Freddie Mercury. I mean, Freddie Mercury.

Freddie Mercury. (Do you think if I say his name three times, I’ll summon him?) I might not have given him a second thought before seeing Bohemian Rhapsody, but I sure am thinking about him now. I’m also thinking that Rami Malek could win an Oscar for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury.

This movie may be contrived and sometimes too superficial, but its final scene genuinely moved me to tears.

How can I say this emphatically enough? I cry all the time. I cry very easily. I enjoy crying. I’m always willing to engage with (or create) cathartic material. A story need not work too hard to get me to cry.

But in this case, I’m talking about something more than just crying.

I was genuinely moved. No matter the artificiality of the film, Freddie Mercury was an actual person who actually performed so passionately at Live Aid, then actually died of complications from AIDS a few years later. The tears aren’t of sorrow, they’re of this weird, transcendent joy.

The final scene of this film is so powerful that I thought as I watched, “This had better be the last scene because it’s the proverbial tough act to follow.” And, sure enough, the only way they can follow Malek’s astonishing performance channeling Mercury at Live Aid is with footage of the actual Freddie Mercury performing during the end credits.

The Good:
I had heard that director Bryan Singer got fired during the production of this film, but then I saw him listed as the sole director in the opening credits. That confused me, so I double checked at home, and, in fact, yes, Singer was fired (for chronic absenteeism and bad behavior on set, from what I can glean), but he still ended up getting solo credit for directing. That’s fairly unusual.

After watching Singer’s movie about Freddie Mercury, I want to say that Singer is the perfect person to direct a biopic of Freddie Mercury. But since most of my knowledge of Freddie Mercury comes from this movie, I have no way of knowing if that impression is accurate.

One thing’s for sure, though. Rami Malek is so good. What I love best about the performance (and, honestly, about the film) is how much Malek brings Freddie Mercury to life and makes me love him.

I’ve heard arguments made before that everybody wants to be a rock star, but I guess I’ve never quite understood that. I never wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to be a novelist. But this movie makes me understand the appeal of performing in front of millions, influencing billions. (Why are there so many movies about that this fall?)

In this film, Freddie Mercury comes across as a personality so big he can’t be contained, possibly even by death. It’s like he’s such a force that he makes other people channel his personality when death has made him unavailable to play himself. There’s something bizarrely, breathtakingly glorious in that. Bohemian Rhapsody gives us a Freddie Mercury who doesn’t fit in. He stands out. He’s transcendent.

It’s hard (for me with my limited knowledge) to know if the members of Queen really saw the band the way they describe it in the movie. But I love the idea presented in the film that they characterize themselves as a band playing to the weirdos at the back of the room, in a sense, the marginalized. This understanding of Queen’s mission really gives power to the final scene of the film. The immense and receptive crowd at Live Aid shows how many people identify themselves as Queen’s target audience. And it is wondrous to watch as Freddie Mercury, grappling with his recent AIDS diagnosis, totally gives himself to the audience and receives their enthusiastic participation.

This scene is more moving, more powerful than anything else I’ve seen at the theater this year.

The rest of the movie is not nearly so transcendent. But it’s always very entertaining with the best soundtrack any reasonable person could ever desire. (For some reason, even the Rick James hit “Super Freak” sneaks in there. Maybe some fan of early 90s rap wanted both “Super Freak” and “Under Pressure” on the same album.)

The performances are uniformly excellent, as well. As I’ve mentioned, Malek is electric and Oscar worthy as Freddie Mercury, but I think the actors portraying the other band members do a fantastic job as well. Honestly, several times, I had to remind myself they weren’t the real guys. (Mind you, I know “the real guys” only from their music videos.)

Gwilym Lee makes a very convincing Brian May. I found Ben Hardy particularly sympathetic as Roger Somebody. (It’s Taylor.) For some reason, I was always looking at his expressive face. And did you know that Joseph Mazzello who plays John Deacon is Tim from the original Jurassic Park (because I just discovered that!)?

A heavily made up Aidan Gillen (Little Finger on Game of Thrones) is a sympathetic presence in the early part of the film playing the band’s first manager John Reid.  And Allen Leech lends mysterious energy as Paul Prenter, Freddie’s early manager and eventual lover whom the movie seems determined to vilify.  I enjoyed seeing Tom Hollander as Jim “Miami” Beach.  Lucy Boynton (whom I really liked as the Countess Andrenyi in Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express) makes Freddie’s beloved wife Mary extremely sympathetic.  And as the guy who won’t take a chance on “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Mike Myers is so much fun (and unrecognizable if you’re not looking out for him).

Best Scene/Best Action Sequence:

The final scene of the movie is without doubt the strongest.  It’s also the reason that Rami Malek deserves to win an Oscar.  His Freddie Mercury is the spirited, magnetic force that draws us in as the movie begins.  (While I was trying to think up the perfect word to describe him, and yelled out, “Magnetic!  That’s it!” my Dad commented, “A magnetic personality would be a positive person who draws negative people to him…or a negative person who draws positive people!”  I thought, “Wow what a great way of considering that!”  Such a linguistically playful definition of “magnetic” does seem to apply to Freddie Mercury.)

Anyway, we watch the early scenes of the movie because of Malek’s captivating Freddie Mercury, but at the end, Malek becomes Freddie Mercury.  When you look at still shots and video of Queen’s performance at Live Aid, it’s really hard to tell which one is Rami Malek and which one is the real Freddie Mercury.  (I experienced this when I searched online to discover if the Live Aid set Queen performs in the movie is authentic.)

Malek absolutely disappears into the character in this part.  What’s best is that his performance here is so good that we don’t even notice it.  We just see Freddie Mercury performing his heart out in front of the teeming crowd.  The scene is a metaphor revealing to us what it means to be Freddie Mercury.

I was moved to tears by the transcendence of Freddy Mercury’s performance.  You’ve heard of being a rock god?  That phrase never resonated with me before, but here it does. This is almost like some kind of weird apotheosis.  The star’s energy is absorbed into the crowd and released again in a movie theater thirty-three years later.

Thanks to the (admittedly contrived) set up, the scene also makes us think of the horrors of the AIDS epidemic back in the 1980s before famous heterosexuals started getting it and people started caring.  The performance of “Radio Gaga” also seems almost torch passing, given that its namesake (Stefanie Germanotta) connects with fans with a passion very like Freddie Mercury’s.  (Obviously, this is arguable.)

This scene is magnificent.  For me, it’s the best scene in a film this year, and since the entire movie sets it up, I have to forgive the film’s flaws.

Best Other Scene:

The funniest scene in this movie, fittingly, showcases Mike Myers as Ray Foster, the music industry executive who fails to recognize the brilliance of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”  This is the scene that reminds us that the movie is not just a Freddie Mercury biopic.  It is about the rise of Queen and the enduring impact of their songs.

Best Scene Visually:
The screen-sized “Bohemian Rhapsody” reviews nearly killed me.  I almost laughed out loud.  The mediocre (kind of harsh) critical reviews culminate in the words, “perfectly adequate.”  This of a song that everybody knows, a song that was a massive hit not just once, but again, sixteen years later.  To be honest, this scene is especially funny in light of the lukewarm critical reception and enthusiastic audience response greeting Bohemian Rhapsody the movie.

Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Rami Malek:

Malek is good in all his scenes.  Freddie Mercury is the reason to see this movie, and Rami Malek is this movie’s Freddie Mercury (unless you’re talking about the actual singing, which is done only partially by Malek.  Wherever possible, the vocals are provided by the actual Freddie Mercury.  There’s also a third guy doing some of the singing.  So this is kind of like Ray in which Jamie Foxx played the piano but let the real Ray Charles do the singing.  (The Jolson Story is like that, too.  Most audiences today probably haven’t seen that one, but it was a big favorite at my house.  I’d love to teach a class about that movie.)  Jamie Foxx won Best Actor for Ray, so letting Mercury sing shouldn’t hurt Malek’s chances one bit (even though Bradley Cooper does sing).

As I’ve said, the final scene of the movie is the best, but the heart-breaking scene in which Freddie comes out to his wife is also wonderful in a much quieter way.

I think Malek could actually win the Oscar (astonishing since he’s great but the film isn’t).  I’m not saying he will, but I would be quite happy if he did.

The Negatives:

One kind of sketchy move Bohemian Rhapsody makes is the thorough vilification of Paul Prenter.  I understand (now) that some fans do consider him the Yoko of Queen, but still, this movie places all of the responsibility for any of Freddie’s self-destructive behavior entirely on Prenter.  The character gives an interview late in the movie in which he exposes his former friend and lover’s secrets, outing Freddie to the press, alleging that he had meaningless sex with had hundreds (maybe thousands) of people.  The thing is, the movie hasn’t shown us any of this rampant promiscuity explicitly (probably because of the PG-13 rating).  All we’ve seen is a lonely Freddie (under Prenter’s influence) invite a huge party crowd of random people to his house again and again.  We don’t see Freddie sleeping with the party guests.  We don’t even really get to see the parties.  So it’s really easy for the movie audience to believe that Prenter is saying some of these things because he was fired and dumped and rejected and bitter.  If you want to, you can believe that Prenter is greatly exaggerating (even mis-characterizing) Freddie’s behavior.

Now, I don’t have any trouble believing that the real Paul Prenter was a divisive figure who created discord and was into the party scene.  I mean, I have no investment in Paul Prenter, either way.  The point is, this movie shows Freddie Mercury as a loyal (if troubled) husband, who despite his growing realization of his own homosexuality, struggles to remain faithful to his beloved wife until the wicked Prenter seduces him away to a life of dangerous gay excess which inevitably kills him.  Even without knowing much about Mercury, I felt that narrative rang false as I watched.

For one thing, it suggests that Freddie Mercury died because he chose the wicked, self-destructive path of being homosexual.  If only he had stayed on the virtuous path of trying to be straight, he would have lived a happier life.  Maybe he would still be alive now, his beautiful grandchildren playing at his feet.  The movie makes us feel that once Freddie admitted he was gay, it all went wrong for him.  That was his first step toward an early grave.

Now, to be fair to the movie, I have heard that Freddie Mercury lived a life of wild sexual excess.  But are you telling me that he never once had fun at any of these wild parties?  He never enjoyed it at all?  There was absolutely nothing good in his life once he stopped being married to his wife?  He threw all of these lavish, wild parties for the sheer reason that he knew it was his destiny to catch AIDS and die young?  (I guess Percy Shelley did seem pretty enchanted with the idea of drowning at sea, so Freddie Mercury could have been one of those types, but…)

I mean, the movie is not trying to be homophobic.  The touching scene when Freddie struggles to come out to his wife and she helps him along a bit more is well done and moving (though she does say that his life is now going to be difficult and unhappy, as if pronouncing a grim prophecy of his death).  And in the end, we see Freddie come back to the path of virtuousness by finding a nice man and introducing him to his parents.  So the movie isn’t saying it’s bad to be gay.  But at the same time, if anyone in the audience believes that being gay will destroy your life and damn your soul, Bohemian Rhapsody will really reinforce such beliefs.

I think we need to see more of Freddie’s partying instead of only seeing how unhappy he was after the parties and how much he missed his ex-wife when she didn’t come to the window when he turned on the lamp.  (I feel like we’re getting this portion of the story from the people who don’t know it.  The story can’t be, “Freddie got really sad when he went to the window and turned on his lamp, and his ex-wife didn’t turn on her lamp, and that’s what he did for ten years.”)

I know Sacha Baron Cohen wanted to play Freddie Mercury in a more hard R-rated version of his life, but I think the surviving members of Queen didn’t like that idea.  Cohen is a good actor (even though I find his humor too rooted in cruelty for my tastes), and the film he had in mind (which would have been directed by Stephen Frears) probably would have given us a more nuanced take on the talented and troubled musical genius.  Of course, I’m pretty sure general audiences would have liked it less.  I probably would have enjoyed it less myself (although if Frears really had directed, maybe not.  I loved The Queen).  Bohemian Rhapsody is more like a Broadway musical brought to the screen than a gritty, in-depth biopic.  Maybe Freddie would have appreciated the operatic vibe the film is going for, but that same quality would probably have been enhanced if Bohemian Rhapsody gave us not just the highs and the lows of Mercury’s life, but also the highs in the lows.

The basic problem is that the story we’re given seems to skim the surface of the actual events.  You don’t have to know the actual events to have this sense.  Also, the movie is obviously extremely contrived.  (We get so many tongue-in-cheek, wink-at-the-audience jokes.  They’re fun, but they’re obviously manufactured to amuse us.)  I wish the days leading up to Live Aid had really happened the way the movie shows us, but as you watch, you think, “This is too neat.  It can’t be true.”  And, research so cursory it doesn’t deserve to be called research immediately shows that, in fact, it isn’t true.

Basically, Bohemian Rhapsody gives us the version of Queen’s rise that you might find in a children’s biography.  It’s condensed, largely fictionalized, scaled-down, simplified, altered to toy with our emotions in just the right places.  The story we’re given is so simplified that it’s not exactly true.

But the music is true.  Real Queen songs are used, and the real Freddie Mercury is often the one singing them.

Overall:

I thoroughly enjoyed Bohemian Rhapsody.  The movie is not without its (sometimes glaring) flaws, but to be brutally honest, some of its weaknesses will probably make it more palatable to a general audience.  The Queen songs are fantastic and certainly hold up over time, and Rami Malek’s performance as the always charismatic (and often enigmatic) lead singer is really something special, fitting since Freddie Mercury was clearly something special himself.