It will not rock you and you may wish it was fantasy.
Following the rise of the arena rock band whom we have to thank for the titular song along with a slew of rock and genre bending classics, “Bohemian Rhapsody” regularly posits that what makes Queen so great is that they can’t be defined as one thing and that nobody truly knows Queen, they only know the perception of it.
Unfortunately, for all the spots of greatness captured on
film by this movie, it sadly falls into that very trap of celebrating the idea
of Queen without meaningfully studying them as the fascinating subjects that
they could have been.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” is ultimately an average at best film
that commits the painful sin of being a pastiche of biopic clichés stitched
together in a way that clearly illustrates 3 or 4 better movies this material
could have been tailored to make, all at odds with one another.
Rami Malek’s name is bound to be the number one thing
mentioned in discussion of this movie and with damn good reason; his uncanny
capture of the late Freddie Mercury’s essence throughout his brief lifetime,
from airport worker to the top of the music industry and the ability to convey
a quirky and flamboyant yet self aware and socially awkward man being granted
the opportunity to define his own perception in a way that he’s always
self-identified as for the first time is almost Oscar worthy and bound to put
his career on the map once and for all if it wasn’t already on the upswing.
Unfortunately, it’s a performance let down by a slew of
narrative, technical and screenplay shortcomings that make the rest of the
feature pass through the mind like a harmless fiber supplement through the body
at best and an absolute chore to sit through at worst.
Central to “Bohemian Rhapsody’s” identity crisis is that it
can’t seem to truly settle on where its focus is.
It’s a good thing that Malek knocks his take on Mercury out
of the park because everybody that isn’t Mercury gets the shaft in a way that’s
borderline offensive. Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, and Joseph Mazzello play fellow
band members Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon. Though their
performances are excellent, they’re never allowed to build compelling or
cohesive arcs because they don’t really exist within a capacity that goes
beyond the direct narrative of Freddie Mercury or Queen itself.
Despite the frequent positing of the band being a family and
the framing of Mercury seeking a place to belong ironically with the group that
fed his bloating ego, his perspective is the only one that doesn’t feel
manufactured to the point where major swaths of the movie make less sense as it
goes along.
The titular song is regularly made out to be a masterpiece
of musical composition, poking fun at its modern day appraisal without
accounting for the critical lambasting that it received at the time of its
release which was a substantial setback to Queen’s career that is never
properly addressed in favor of making Queen and, above all else, Mercury to
appear in the right.
One may then be tempted to think that perhaps the movie is
more of a Freddie Mercury biopic but the perspective of outside parties and the
movie’s attempt to be a giant self-celebration of the band itself leads to a
lot of aspects of Malek’s performance falling to the wayside. Without appropriate
context, these aspects can feel bold in their effort to be depicted but painful
in the landing that they stick.
The notion of him seeking an understanding family of his
choosing rings rather hollow when his own family isn’t depticted as being
outright dismissive of him despite his obnoxious behavior, while the lack of
characterization of his band mates leaves him with an alternative that isn’t as
powerful as the movie seems to think.
Perhaps the most audacious yet cringe-worthy failing of the
movie on the part of Mercury’s life is their portrayal of his sexuality, which
at first attempts to reconcile what we know of the man’s private affairs under
a suitable and often cinematically unexplored bisexual label, only to renege on
said decision to define him as the gay man he is often assumed to be, while troublingly
framing most of his behavior and indulgence in said preference as self
destructive. I’m not going to say that I was offended by the amateurish depiction of this as the
downfall of his career and mental state when it wasn’t in reality but I can’t
blame anybody looking up to him as an icon, gay or otherwise, for feeling so
themselves.
That last point is the fatal blow of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” as
failing to be a compelling drama about Mercury or the dynamic of the band
itself, the movie does seem on the surface to be a good celebration of their
music and impact.
Performances are on point and the concert sequences are
generally fun but dig even the slightest bit deeper and the mounting inconsistencies,
ranging from music that’s out of place, to events portrayed years before they were supposed to
be to pitiful dramatic effect, even to the bigger stadium scenes where the copy
and paste effect on a digitally enhanced crowd is jarringly pronounced, point
to an insincerity that kind of spits in the face of Queen in favor of making a
dollar off of gullible fans that religiously worship a handful of their music.
All of the film’s ups and downs crescendo at the 2 hour mark
of a movie in desperate need of trimming, where they decide not to end on some
sort of powerhouse performance or moment of effective drama but on a bad 10
minute recreation of Queen’s Live Aid concert, the catalyst of which was set
into motion by Mercury’s AIDS diagnosis, which didn’t happen until a year and a
half after said performance.
4 Princes of the Universe out of 10
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