Review: Freddie Mercury Biopic Bites the Dust
The 134 minute biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, which was directed by Bryan Singer, is easily watchable, but fails to do justice to the legendary rock band at its center.
The supporting cast, including Ben Hardy as Roger Taylor and Gwilym Lee as Brian May, is outshined by Rami Malek’s performance. Despite the conventional script, Malek captures the rock primadonna with astonishing accuracy and delicacy. He struts onstage in skin-tight catsuits with all the flamboyance that cemented Freddie Mercury’s place in rock-and-roll history.
The biggest flaw of Bohemian Rhapsody is its sanitized script. The cliché of the well-meaning but strict immigrant parent, the commercializing producer—the boxes are all checked. The complexity of Mercury’s journey to stardom is lost in the montages of Queen’s performances. Their rise to fame is quick and relatively smooth and the potential to delve into the band’s formation and creative process is lost. The scenes from their time in a barn recording that would become “Bohemian Rhapsody” embed some humor and insight into the band’s dynamic, but it is ultimately cut short, making the rest of the band members’ personalities as two dimensional as the plotline about Mercury’s Parsi heritage; after he mentions to his family that he legally changed his name to Freddie Mercury, it isn’t brought up again.
The main sore point, however, is the second part of the film, which follows Mercury’s solo career after the breakup of the band. In the movie, his decision to go solo is seen as a greed-driven decision, which also happens to coincide with the beginning of his sexual promiscuity. He uses drugs and sex to erase his loneliness and loses his romantic relationship with Mary Austin, his former fiancé.
In reality, Queen never completely disbanded. Drummer Roger Taylor was the first to pursue a solo career and the group collectively agreed to focus on their individual activities until they would release a new Queen album. While dramatization is usually forgivable for biopics, there are some homophobic connotations to this narrative—it implies that had Mercury stayed with Austin, he would have never contracted AIDS and links his promiscuity to what could have been his downfall.
In addition, when telling Austin about his bisexuality, she dismisses him and states that he’s gay. While this did happen in real life, the film never addresses the issue again. In reality, Mercury had both male and female lovers, a prominent one being German porn star Barbara Valentin. The erasure of bisexuality is unfortunately common in movies, and Bohemian Rhapsody is no exception.
Despite the obvious hiccups, the film manages to end on a strong note: the legendary Live Aid performance. Malek’s stunning performance would enthrall any audience. The scene is filled with excitement and energy; it is the highlight of the film. The movie ends with a short description of the end of Mercury’s life: his life with Jim Hutton, the next few years of his career, and the establishment of the Mercury Phoenix Trust, formed by the surviving members of Queen after his death in 1991 from AIDS.
Overall, Bohemian Rhapsody fails to live up to the legacy of Queen, but manages to hit all of the necessary beats of a feel-good movie.
by JINHEE HEO