Bohemian Rhapsody

Dir: Bryan Singer

2018

***

Like pretty much everyone else, I was very weary of this Queen/Freddie Mercury biopic and for many reasons. I’m a fan of both man and band, I’m not sure there is anyone who can say they don’t like/love at least one Queen song, and recent music biopics haven’t all been that successful. Making a biopic when so many people involved are still around and advising can be both a benefit and a hindrance. I suppose my main concern came after Sacha Baron Cohen left the project. I could see him giving a convincing performance as Freddie Mercury and had little reservation regarding his casting. However, when he left the project citing that the rest of Queen wanted to focus more on what happened after Mercury died, alarm bells went off. Sure, Queen carried on with Adam Lambert taking over singing duties but in reality, no one really sees Queen now as anything other than a novelty band with a west end musical. Sacha Baron Cohen clearly wanted it to be a full on Mercury biopic, while Brian May and Roger Taylor wanted it to be about the band. You can’t have one without the other really but the truth is Freddie Mercury is by far the interesting part of Queen, while the other three are rather dull. Talented but dull. The end result is clearly a compromise, which was for the best, but even with May and Taylor as co-writers/producers/advisers they still come across as dull. To be fair though, everyone is dull compared to Freddie Mercury. This begged the question, who on earth could take on such a performance? Getting Mercury right was the first concern, fitting in all of the band’s history into a feature film was the second. Less important aspects of their history are missed out and many events and characters are amalgamated to great effect but it was the key moments that they needed to get right. In this regard they did and didn’t get it right. The film clearly went through development hell when Sacha Baron Cohen walked and was replaced with Ben Whishaw with Dexter Fletcher as the director. Both men walked soon after citing creative differences and it became clear that May and Taylor had no idea what they wanted, or at least, what they wanted was not what everyone else thought was right. I’m not sure Ben Whishaw was the right actor for the job personally, so I’m glad they found Rami Malek when they did. His performance was tremendous and without it I’m not sure the film would have been the success it was. The film itself covers many important moments in Queen’s history but a lot of it is untrue and so much of it is omitted due to the time constraints. This made me think that this could, and perhaps should have been a televisual mini-series. After all of the film’s development problems, it was amazing that it was actually finished thanks to Bryan Singer’s irrational behaviour while filming. The disgraced director would turn up late and often not at all during the shoot and in the end Dexter Fletcher was asked back to finish the filming after he had left the project some years before. I don’t think the direction of the film is very good at all and it looks like a typical made-for-TV biopic with all the usual clichés thrown in. However, they get it right where they really need to. The Live Aid scene is the big one and the one everyone was talking about. It is incredible and like watching the real thing, it’s just a shame the rest of the film is a million miles away from it. I would argue that it would be only half a film without Rami Malek’s fantastic performance. That said, there are some brilliant tidbits thrown in that I loved. These range from the amalgamation of events and people, nods to certain actors/characters and big moments in Queen’s history that they didn’t have time to explore. I loved how Freddie is coxed into a men’s room by Adam Lambert playing a truck driver. I loved Mike Myers’ character Ray Foster (a fictional character loosely based on EMI chief Roy Featherstone) who complains that Bohemian Rhapsody isn't music that teenagers can bang their heads to. This is clearly a nod to Wayne's World where Wayne (portrayed by Myers) and his friends are headbanging to Bohemian Rhapsody in the car. Myers really had to push for the use of Bohemian Rhapsody in the film when the producers felt it wouldn't be appropriate. Myers stood his ground, eventually threatening to quit the movie. Myers got his way in the end though, and when the movie became a huge hit, and Bohemian Rhapsody reentered the charts, peaking at at #2 in the United States. The movie was also credited for introducing Queen to a new audience. Myers was offered the part as a way of thanks from the band. I liked the acknowledgment of Queen’s work on the Highlander soundtrack by showing Mercury reflected in a pair of sunglasses and I liked the amalgamated appearances of so many rumoured occurrences that happened at several of Mercury’s infamous parties. If you are a Queen nerd then the film is something of a puzzle full of Easter eggs. These Easter eggs almost make up for the film’s misgivings. I found the factual errors, no matter how minor, to be typical of music biopics and I do find them tiring. People do want to know how big band got together, so I’m not sure why this is always changed?For instance, Freddie Mercury had known Staffell from art college, and had shown an interest in joining Smile before his departure. Mercury had also lived and worked with Roger Taylor, way before he joined Smile and he didn’t meet them and best friend Mary Austin on the same night. Also, John Deacon was not their original bassist, he was the fourth! Later on in the film Mercury is portrayed as selfish for seeking a solo career but Taylor had released two solo albums and May had released one before Mercury had even thought about releasing his first. Queen never split up, so Live Aid was not a reunion. They released The Works in early 1984 and then toured worldwide. The last show of the tour was eight weeks before Live Aid. They also had no reservations about performing in the concert at two weeks' notice, as depicted in the film. It is another case of false tension for dramatic effect at the cost of fact and reason. It nearly ruins the film for me. Mercury wanted to keep his HIV diagnosis private, so I understand why the film wouldn’t go into it much but you do have to question when the biopic starts and the fantasy ends. According to 'Freddie Mercury: His Life in His Own Words', compiled and edited by Greg Brooks and Simon Lipton, he once said "I have visions of actually having a film made of my life story, one day, which I would have a key part in. I might not play the lead myself. My dears, the things I've done in my lifetime... it'll be totally triple X-rated, I'll tell you!" This almost makes me think we’ve been cheated out of a Sacha Baron Cohen version of the film, the fact that he wasn’t allowed to make the film the outrageous biopic that he thought it should be and walked because of it. Many people who knew Freddie didn’t like the film and many people are written out of history because of it. I all honesty, this should have been a passionate television mini-series, chronicling how they really met and where each member was at each chapter of their history. They could have got at least eight compelling hour-long episodes out of it and the making of their video to I Want To Break Free could have been an episode in itself. It would have allowed time for Freddie’s diagnosis to be explored more tastefully and for the audience to understand the overall progression of the band – arguably one of the greatest in rock and roll history. It should have been as compelling, entertaining and as outrageous as Freddie was, but it wasn’t. I liked it and I thought Rami Malek was excellent, I just think that after he received death threats from the Egyptian government over his performance, they might as well have gone all the way and told a 100% authentic version of the story.