Story by Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan
Screenplay Written by Anthony McCarten
Directed by Bryan Singer/Directed by Dexter Fletcher (uncredited)
** (two stars)
RATED PG 13
Frankly, and yes, I do have to say it...the 1998 VH-1 Behind The Music documentary special was more effective.
Dear readers, for those of you who know me in the real world, then you know. For those of you who do not, you will soon find out. But let me now state upon this site that ever since my childhood, as I was growing up in the 1970's, the music of Queen has been a beloved constant in my life from, I would imagine, that very first listen of "Killer Queen" (released October 21, 1974) on Chicago's WLS AM.
The musical wonderland as created by the collective of John Deacon, Brian May, Roger Taylor and of course, the iconic, immortal Freddie Mercury was a universe unlike any other to bask oneself within and for me, I practically drowned inside of it. Every song that hit the radio airwaves, I latched onto powerfully. The experience of hearing the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" (released October 31, 1975) for instance, was as Earth shifting every single time it was heard just as much as the aural vortex of sound upon the daily schoolbus was utterly silenced every single time "Another One Bites The Dust" (released 1980) appeared on the driver's small transistor radio. I remember being especially obsessed with the band's "News Of The World" (released October 28, 1977) album as it was a record I checked out of the school library constantly, essentially memorizing every single note of the work as I loved it so completely. I remember wanting to see Director Mike Hodges' re-make of "Flash Gordon" (1980) solely because Queen had scored the film--for that matter, the band's music was also the only draw for me to see Director Russell Mulcahy's "Highlander" (1986).
Album after album, song after song, and most certainly, within the band's peerless performance during 1985's Live Aid philanthropic concert event, Queen was a band that seemed to re-define the concept of originality over and again. Their musical aesthetic was uncompromising in its sheer breadth, inventiveness, superlative musicality and recording production as they bridged the gaps between hard rock, prog rock, R&B, soul, crystalline ballads, funk, pop, heavy metal, classical, vaudevillian, jazz, blues and of course, the operatic with an idiosyncratic style that afforded them the rare ability of sounding like no other band other than themselves and somehow being embraced by the world in the process, as Queen means so many different things to generations of listeners from all walks of life. This was a band that constantly broke barriers and Freddie Mercury, the consummate performer, the sky scorching vocalist, was a risk taker and then some.
So, it was a shame to witness just how pedestrian and superficial an experience the new musical rock biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody," as credited to Director Bryan Singer actually was. It is by no means a bad film, so to speak. There are quite a number of sequences in this handsome production, that are considerably thrilling and as Freddie Mercury, a deeply committed Rami Malek certainly works like the devil to honor and almost resurrect this artistic figure, the likes of whom we will never see again. And still, the whole proceedings felt so tame, so toothless and filled with discrepancies that, for me, as a fan of the band and cinematic storytelling itself, I felt to be unforgivable. For a film that dares to bear the name of one of the most jaw dropping and creative rock singles ever made as its title, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was ultimately more than a little banal. Queen, and especially Freddie Mercury deserved exceedingly better than what was delivered.
With a "cradle-to-grave" structure book-ended by the band's appearance at Live Aid, "Bohemian Rhapsody" traces the story of Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek), beginning in 1970 when he was the Indian-British Parsi college student and Heathrow baggage worker under his real name Farrokh Bulsara and fan of the local college band Smile, which housed both guitarist/vocalist Brian May (Gwilym Lee) and drummer/vocalist Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy).
When Smile's lead vocalist abruptly quits to join another band, Farrokh quickly convinces May and Taylor to allow him to join the band as lead singer. With bassist John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello) joining soon afterwards, and Farrokh legally changing his name to Freddie Mercury, the band, now re-christened Queen, begin their meteoric rise to stardom. .
From here, "Bohemian Rhapsody" chronicles the odyssey of Freddie Mercury, to global fame and fortune to increased internal isolation, from artistic independence to alienation from his bandmates via the duplicitous personal manager Paul Prenter (Allen Leech), from his marriage to Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton) to his gradual self-realization as being a homosexual, from rampant promiscuity to finding love with Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker) and his ultimate contraction of the AIDS virus, which led to his death in 1991.
For what it is worth, "Bohemian Rhapsody" is unquestionably a glorious looking production, beautifully photographed by Cinematographer Newtom Thomas Sigel, and is certainly impeccably well cast (Gwilym Lee as Brian May especially provided me with some serious double takes and a completely unrecognizable Mike Myers is absolutely terrific as the EMI record executive who refused to release "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a single due to its six minute length) and is unquestionably fueled by one of the most dynamic set of songs that feel designed to be heard blasting in your movie theaters. Sequences of the band recording and most certainly, the film's climactic re-staging of the Live Aid concert performance are absolutely thrilling and deeply effective.
And yet, everything was sort of ho-hum to me...at best! "Bohemian Rhapsody" the film and completely unlike the song itself, was a cinematic experience that felt so restrain ed to the point of being nearly inert. There was simply no momentum to the film, no ascension and in many ways, no real sense of direction or even a perspective.
Now, before the film's release, there was question of how sanitized an experience "Bohemian Rhapsody" would be regarding Freddie Mercury's private life, some fearing the film would be "straight-washed," removing any sense of Mercury's homosexuality. To that, and I guess for a film rated PG 13, the film does not shy away from this aspect of Mercury's life by any means. But I guess, the problem I had was that it never seemed to go beyond the surface of these experiences terribly much, whether by design or disinterest from the filmmakers to ensure that "Bohemian Rhapsody would remain a film that would speak to the masses with the least amount of controversial material.
To that end, here is where I felt that so much of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was a missed opportunity. This is Queen and Freddie Mercury we are dealing with. Figures that defied all of the rules regarding rock music, entertainment, and even the ways in how to live one's life...and to even face death as well. In my mind, a film about Queen would be one to follow suit creatively. One that was decidedly R rated, of course. But artistically some thing more akin to what Writer/Director Todd Haynes achieved with both "Velvet Goldmine" (1998), which took on nothing less than the thinly veiled legacy of David Bowie and the entire glam rock movement, and his truly forward thinking "I'm Not There" (2007), his furiously innovative pastiche of Bob Dylan, which starred no less than seven actors portraying variations of the Dylan persona.
Or even further, perhaps a film like Director Don Cheadle's difficult, impressionistic and criminally underseen "Miles Ahead" (2015), a fully unorthodox look into the psychological world of Miles Davis or even better, Director Bill Pohlad's achingly stunning "Love And Mercy" (2014), which starred both John Cusack and Paul Dano as Brian Wilson at two distinct phases of his life.
In all of those films, challenging as they each are to varying degrees, each filmmaker possessed a specific point of view of their subject matter that allowed audiences to engage with these musical figures in exciting and invigorating new ways that made us re-think what we already may or may not have known about them and the music they created. By contrast, "Bohemian Rhapsody" never really offers us any such insights and as riveting as Rami Malek is in the film, his Freddie Mercury never felt to be as immersive as it could have been because the actual screenplay and direction itself didn't really give Malek any conceivable depth to delve into.
To some degrees, a more traditional approach or a potential crowd pleaser, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Take films like Oliver Stone's "The Doors" (1991) or Taylor Hackford's "Ray" (2004), both of which follow more conventional narrative structures and possess two outstanding leading performances from Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison and Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, that feverishly burrowed under the skin to the point where you need to blink twice to see if you are regarding the actors or documentary footage. And again, both Stone and Hackford as filmmakers supplied their own perspective about their subjects, therefore giving us in the audience something to cling to, to argue about, to embrace and to ruminate over.
As Freddie Mercury, Rami Malek is often sensational but to a point, the point where it is probably the best Mercury impersonation you will ever witness but it does not necessarily mean that we were given a great performance. Again, Malek was more than committed to the task at hand but it was at the service of a film that didn't seem to have an opinion about Mercury or Queen other than we all loved them...and in some ways, that is not enough to hang onto a full movie.
There is so much material about Freddie Mercury the film could have covered but seemed disinterested in doing so. For instance, did Mercury's heritage hold any impetus in him wanting to be an artist? What of his sexuality as it related to his artistry--especially as this is about a band of four men calling themselves "Queen"? What of the controversial "I Want To Break Free" music video (lovingly re-created in the film) and the rampant homophobia within the rock industry that essentially stalled their success in America? None of that is here whatsoever. And what of the full breadth of Queen's music? Aside from the hits, we hear nothing of anything else they created. Yes, I know that this film is decidedly not a documentary but "Bohemian Rhapsody" felt less like a full cinematic experience and more like a series of highlights and moments strung together with Queen songs as the glue. It all felt to be like a filmed checklist with each sequence being one more thing to cross off the list, and all with no sense of narrative flow.
I am curious if the behind-the-scenes drama of "Bohemian Rhapsody" had anything to do with this level of disconnect as Bryan Singer was fired from the project mid-filming due to excessive, erratic behavior, leaving Dexter Fletcher to enter and finish the film (due to Directors Guild Of America rules, Singer has retained full directorial credit while Fletcher receives an Executive Producer credit). With that in consideration, it is a miracle "Bohemian Rhapsody" turned out as well as it has but even so, the lack of substantive material felt glaring.
Even moreso, were all of the striking inaccuracies, completely inexcusable considering how easy it is to gather all of the true information regarding Queen. and surprisingly so as both Brian May and Roger Taylor were consultants on the film (John Deacon has fully retired from the music business although he reportedly gave his blessings to this film). Now, I am no Queen scholar by any means, and yes, there is always a sense of artistic license with films of this sort. But even with the little that I do know, I was stunned to find this level of fault in a film where this should not have been the case whatsoever.
For instance, we often witness bassist John Deacon contributing vocals to the trademark stacked harmonies of Queen but Deacon, in reality, never sang on any Queen recordings. We have a sequence set in 1980, finding the band writing and recording "We Will Rock You"...a song the band released, in actuality, three years earlier. The ways the band members of Queen first met as well as Freddie's first meeting with Mary did not occur in reality as depicted in the film. The band never even broke up, as implied late in the film, therefore not making their performance at Live Aid a reunion (when in fact, their Live Aid performance arrived after they completed a year long tour, meaning the band was in prime fighting form by the time of Live Aid). And most strikingly, Freddie Mercury was not diagnosed with the AIDS virus until two years after Live Aid, not before, as the film implies being the catalyst to even undertake that performance.
Again, I know, I know, this is not a documentary. But I just did not appreciate all of the re-structuring, embellishments and seemingly intentional errors placed within a story that already contains more then enough inherent drama, pathos, excitement, humor and peaks and valleys of lives being lived in a tremendously bright spotlight. To me, there was no need to create drama and have fallacies in a film like this one, where the truth is indeed more than we could ever need to have. In doing so, it just rubbed me the wrong way and therefore did a disservice to Freddie Mercury's memory and Queen's legacy, as they were fearless artistically and honestly. "Bohemian Rhapsody," on the other hand, hedged its bets too often, resulting in a movie that could attain a mass appeal yet one perhaps rooted in a certain nostalgia rather than via cinematic appreciation or innovation.
But hey, I am just one person and in regards to the audience response to the film, I just may be in the minority as it is indeed a hit. Even so, I do think there is a better film about Queen and Freddie Mercury yet to be made. One that is more courageous, audacious, bodacious, ridiculous, fantastic and definitive than what was presented throughout in "Bohemian Rhapsody."
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