I was born in the Sixties, so of course I have a relationship with Queen. They provided the soundtrack to a few slow dances at high school, a few late night car rides through the back roads of Southwestern Ontario, and a few purchases at the record store. I had the cassette tape of Queen's Greatest Hits and I played it incessantly.
The song Bohemian Rhapsody freaked me out as a kid. It mentioned demons, which frightened me, and the song's story of a man destined for execution really stood out from the other Seventies offerings of undying love and ballroom blitzes. When I heard the song at night--I could never sleep because of nightmares, and listened to the radio instead--I would turn it off. Bohemian Rhapsody was a day time song. Too creepy at night in a darkened house.
Which brings us to the film Bohemian Rhapsody, which I saw last night. It's a film that demands a certain approach. If the producers were aiming to create a soft focus, crowd pleasing biography of Freddie Mercury, then they succeeded. If you as a Queen fan were expecting a movie about the band, of how they created their albums and what life was like for them as they crawled from obscurity to performing at Live Aid, then you will be a little less pleased.
First, I will say that Rami Malek is superb as Freddie. He captures the swagger and charisma, as well as the underlying empathy. Yes, he's lip synching the songs, but he's lip synching his motherfucking heart out. It's a credit to Malek's performance and to the make up/costume designers that he owns the screen whenever he walks into a scene.
Second to Malek, the musical interludes are a joy. Hearing Queen being blasted across a theatre, seeing audience members smiling and clapping along to these classic songs, was an unexpected delight.
The movie itself, though, felt light. Aside from several veerings from reality, the story makes weird time jumps, leaping forward over events that we only hear about in lines of dialogue. It seems the band goes from fixing broken vans in the middle of nowhere to having had a first hit single in the blink of an eye. We get a montage of the recording of Bohemian Rhapsody, we get a montage of their first American tour, and we skip over albums that I would have appreciated even a slight nod towards. It's all very fast and general audience friendly, stopping only to show the occasional band dispute (slightly raised voices and threats to throw household appliances, all quickly defused) and Freddie beginning to understand his homosexuality.
Before you know it, the band has broken up (never happened), Freddie is in the depths of illness and rock star debauchery, and a gig at Live Aid offers up redemption for the band and Freddie himself.
As a result, so many plot lines are left dangling, blown away by the next musical number. Freddie's relationship with his family goes from rocky at the beginning of the film to forgiving at film's end, with nothing in between. Freddie's relationship with Mary Austin also gets the same time jump gloss, with the two of them being engaged to being distant friends, yet still buying apartments across the street from one another. Their relationship is a movie in itself--how do two people who clearly love one another maintain ties with the challenges they face? Mercury left everything to Austin in his will--surely she should play a far larger role here? But no--after being an anchor for Mercury in the beginning of the film, Austin fades into the background, only to reappear to remind Freddie of what he lost when he embraced his homosexuality.
Which brings us to the treatment of homosexuality in this movie. Bearing in mind that this movie seems aimed at a general audience that has fond memories of Queen but maybe can't name an album or more than one song--(and may potentially have less than liberal ideas about LGBTQ people-)-Freddie's homosexuality seems tied inexorably to his decline. When he was involved in a straight relationship with Mary, we have scenes of them cuddling in a warm apartment or laying beside one another in a healing, post-coital glow. But once Freddie takes male lovers, we have scenes of him leering at truckers in bathrooms, of rent boys being thrown out of hotel rooms, or Freddie eyeing up man candy in BDSM clubs. The message here is that if Freddie had only stayed with Mary, he'd still be happy. Being gay means losing all of that, replaced by social parasites and loneliness.
The film offers some course correction when Freddie meets up with Jim Hutton, with promises of a more healthy relationship, but it feels like a rushed afterthought suggested by a script doctor. Hutton appears very near the end of the film, and his inclusion at Live Aid seems unearned in terms of story. For all the time Bohemian Rhapsody spends showing us unhealthy gay relationships, it would have been nice to balance that out with something more than a late character inclusion and a note in the final credits.
And for a movie about Queen, it would have been nice to see more of the other three members. They seem to drift through time (and the movie) without aging, being affable and only slightly grouchy to Freddie's excesses, with wives and children popping up here and there. We see very little of Freddie's relationship with them outside of band related issues, aside from Freddie showing a time pressed Roger Taylor his new mansion.
But I think I'm looking for another film. Bohemian Rhapsody is a crowd pleasing trip down memory lane with some great music and stellar acting from Rami Malek, not an analytical or hard look at one of the world's most popular bands. And perhaps a light, crowd pleasing spectacle is exactly what Freddie Mercury would have wanted.
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