Malek electrifies as queen’s mercury
Actor delivers electrifying portrayal of queen frontman freddie mercury
If the movie Bohemian Rhapsody were a song, it would have a slow opening and a weak bridge. But it would also include some fine verses and a strong finish that would have you humming it a few days later.
But any criticisms of Bohemian Rhapsody — named after one of Queen’s longest, weirdest songs — by the likes of yours truly are defanged by the fact that the movie splashes snippets of negative reviews of the 1975 song across the screen.
It’s a nice nudge in the ribs for the audience — look, no one back then understood that this would be a rock classic. But it also suggests that if you don’t like this Freddie Mercury biopic, it’s because you’re too square to get it.
Even the head of the band’s label says he can’t imagine kids in their cars banging their heads to Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s a clever dis given that the exec is played by a heavily disguised Mike Myers, who in 1992’s Wayne’s World did just that.
Rami Malek and a set of prosthetic teeth star as Farrokh Bulsara, who was born in Zanzibar to British Indian parents and changed his name to Freddie Mercury after forming Queen in 1970 with guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee) and drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy). Bass guitarist John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello) joined soon after. Mercury really did suffer from hyperdontia (four extra teeth),
although given that he credited them for his vocal range, maybe “suffer” isn’t the right word. Besides, Mercury has enough trials in this sprawling biopic, which follows him from 1970, when he worked as a baggage handler at Heathrow, to 1985, when the band performed as part of the Live Aid benefit concert at Wembley Stadium. (The next six years, culminating in his death from AIDS in 1991, are mentioned awkwardly as a footnote.) His sexuality certainly loomed large in his life. Mercury had a longtime girlfriend, Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton), to whom he proposed marriage, but the film finds him taking male lovers while the band is on the road. In spite of this he remained close to her, although physically less so as the years pass. When she demands to know what he wants of her, he answers “almost everything,” and makes it sound like the most romantic sentiment in the world. The lure of drugs, alcohol and parties also seems to have taken its toll, although this is precisely the point where the film starts to drag.
A trippy news conference, all wonky angles as Mercury spars with the pushy, prurient British media, seems out of place with the rest of the movie’s straightahead shooting style.
But writers Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hour, The Theory of Everything) and Peter Morgan (The Queen, The Crown) are more interested in the highs than the lows. We watch the boys montage their way across the U.S., playing to adoring crowds from coast to coast. And we see them hunkered down at rural Rockfield, a kind of musical Bletchley Park — they emerged from the Welsh studio with the 1974 LP Sheer Heart Attack, and a year later with A Night at the Opera, which includes the movie-title song.
The film also focuses on Mercury to the detriment of the other members of Queen. More than once we hear how May would have been a boring astrophysicist and Taylor a dentist had they not found musical fame. And I don’t think we learn a thing about Deacon. But to many fans, Mercury was Queen and vice versa, and Malek’s gyrating, fistpumping performance electrifies every scene he’s in — that is, most of them.
The actor manages to make Mercury into both a strutting peacock and a human being. Yes, he is full of himself, but — at least in this portrayal — he is also aware of both his musical genius and his personal shortcomings. If not always immediately, at least when it matters for maximum dramatic effect.
I’m going out on a limb in predicting Bohemian Rhapsody the movie won’t attain the cult status of Bohemian Rhapsody the song. The biopic treatment is not the equal of its subject, but it is still a well-made and loving tribute that will send you scurrying to dig out your Queen LPs to remember what all the fuss was about.