‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is half true and all spectacular.
Queen biopic is half true, all spectacular
“Bohemian Rhapsody” is probably what Freddie Mercury was aiming for all along, a big, splashy, half-true biopic in the Hollywood style. It’s a bit corny, but grand, a bit obvious, but entertaining, and inspiring almost in spite of itself. And Mercury is at the center of it, a figure to pity and admire and most of all to marvel at, because there never was anyone like this guy. He got to be Freddie Mercury, and the rest of us got to watch. If you love Queen, you will probably love “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but this is a movie for everyone. It’s a good story, and the music — the accomplishment of it, the singularity of it — sounds better than you might remember.
It presents Mercury as one of those guys who was either going to be a weirdo or a star. There was not much opportunity for middle ground. As if singled out for a special destiny, he was born with four extra incisors, and if the makers of this
movie are determined to do anything, it’s to do justice to those teeth. Rami Malek, who plays Mercury, seems to be conscious of his teeth at all times. The teeth get a major workout here — try forgetting them for five full minutes; it won’t happen. Yet friends say that Mercury was self-conscious about his teeth, too, so maybe Malek is striking the right note.
We meet young Freddie when he was still Farrokh Bulsara, an immigrant from Zanzibar, trying to break into rock ’n’ roll. When a local band loses its singer, he introduces himself, and the guys aren’t impressed. Then he sings a few lines from a song, and they stop smirking. This is the ensemble that eventually becomes Queen.
Throughout, “Bohemian Rhapsody” exaggerates Mercury’s awkwardness and uniqueness, perhaps as a way of emphasizing his specialness. But at times it’s overdone, with Malek here and there looking downright creepy and licking his lips like some kind of fantastical woods creature. Still, it’s hard to come up with someone who would have been better than Malek. To his credit, he does the one thing that would most seem impossible: In the stage scenes, he makes you believe he’s Freddie Mercury.
The movie uses Mercury’s own vocals. For some performers — Edith Piaf is another one — you just have to do that. But the words really do seem to be coming out of Malek’s mouth. He captures Mercury’s flair and physicality, as well as the whole atmosphere of a man being set loose onstage, as if he’d been caged up every minute since his last performance.
Most importantly, the movie makes the case for Mercury’s particular artistry, his emulation of high art extravagance within a pop context. He was like someone imitating Puccini in his basement. The results were obviously going to be off and weird and wrong, and yet — in the intensity of the attack, the purity of the conviction and the sincerity of the emotion — probably more like Puccini than something a Juilliard student might do. Mercury’s true emotional language was that of the big gesture.
Inevitably, the movie compresses Mercury’s career. Success comes very quickly, and entire albums are skipped over to get to “A Night at the Opera,” an autumn 1975 release that became an absolute smash in March 1976 with the release of the song “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The movie concentrates more on Mercury’s personal life. Apparently, Mercury was quiet in person and let loose only onstage.
Today, he is remembered as a gay icon, but the movie reminds us that this was the 1970s, and most of Mercury’s fans had no idea he was gay. Indeed, Mercury himself was contemplating marriage to a woman and even gave her an engagement ring. That woman, Mary Austin, became his best friend – the inspiration for the song “Love of My Life” — and the scenes between Malek and Lucy Boynton as Mary are some of the most affecting in the film.
Less welcome is the movie’s alteration of history, so that Mercury here was already diagnosed with AIDS at the time of Queen’s 1985 Live Aid performance (he hadn’t been). There’s a scene in which Freddie, some time before Live Aid, tells his friends that he has AIDS, and they tell him he’s a “legend.” That conversation didn’t happen then, and I prefer to think it never happened at all. Even if it did, it’s up to screenwriters to clean up life’s bad dialogue.
For the finale, “Bohemian Rhapsody” restages Queen’s entire Live Aid performance, which makes for a lively, if long, finish. Credited director Bryan Singer (or was it director Dexter Fletcher, who replaced Singer?) has the camera come in from a bird’s-eye view over Wembley Stadium, then sweep over the heads of the audience on the way to the stage. It’s an exhilarating, show-off move — and perfectly right for its subject.