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drwexBohemian Rhapsody is actually a Freddy Mercury movie. Despite noises from the other band members, and whatever 20th Century Fox put in the official storyline about it being a Queen movie, it's not. It's about Freddy from his first moment with the band to Live Aid. 3/5 stars if you are or were a Queen fan or like rock fantasies, 2/5 otherwise.
There are really three kinds of things you can say about this movie and I'll say a bit in each category.
1. It's a much more affecting movie than I expected. It's also better than I had feared it would be. A good argument can be made that Rami Malek should get a Best Actor nod for this work. Malek is in virtually every scene, and brings to life a complex, difficult, incredibly charismatic character full of flaws and contradictions. By contrast, the other band members are flat cut-outs, lacking anything like even a backstory.
Whether Malek's character resembles the real Mercury, is faithful to the deceased rock star, or is a terrible distortion is a matter of much debate. Regardless of which thing you believe, Malek sells it. I cried a lot at this movie, much more than I expected to. I'm told that Malek's staged Live Aid performance is shot-for-shot what Mercury did then; my memory is hazy after all this time, but some bits seem very familiar.
2. This movie is a PG-13 telling of a real-life X-rated story. It's impossible to tell a true-to-life version of Mercury's story and retain a PG-13 rating. His drug use is mentioned maybe twice, and seen a couple times but otherwise avoided. The entire gay sex scene of the time is curtained off behind lurid red veils. Most of his relationships are simply elided, leaving him with only two significant relationships in the film. Having multiple overlapping lovers of multiple genders is not a PG-13 story, so there's that.
Much of the criticism I've read of this film falls into the "but they should have made this other movie instead" camp. That's not an unfair thing to say, particularly if you believe that there's no way to be honest and not horribly distort Mercury's life and legacy by making it PG-13. On the other hand, you have to critique the movie that's in front of you and if you accept that it's going to be PG-13, they did a number of things well. You get a rock legend film with some of the greatest rock music of its generation and that is not a thing to take lightly.
3. This movie really does play HORRIBLY fast-and-loose with the characters and events it portrays. There are plenty of public biographies out there and even a cursory reading of a Wikipedia page will tell you that no, that character didn't come into his life there, and no he didn't actually do that thing and to a significant degree this sort of ahistoricity is the film's most damning characteristic. More behind the cut because it's all spoilers from here.
The first conundrum has to do with Mercury's orientation/identity. When the movie's first previews came out, there was considerable concern this film would completely straightwash him. In fact, it does not. It paints Mercury as gay, which is itself a couple kinds of problematic.
At one point in the film, after experiencing obvious attractions with another man, Mercury says to Lucy Boynton's Mary Austin that he thinks he's bi. She immediately tells him, "No, you're gay."
This is part of Problem 2 - acknowledging Mercury was attracted to/had relationships with men and women would have made the film more complex and less PG-13. The denial is problematic in that it plays into Hollywood's ongoing bi erasure. On the other hand, it's Mary speaking the truth she sees. She's probably wrong, but that's allowed. A woman who thinks she's being pushed aside for a man may well see a claim of being bi as an excuse or diversion or a way to soften an "I don't want you that way anymore" blow.
Historically, it's also sadly accurate. As I struggled to have a bi identity in that time period I heard exactly that language, multiple times. Any expression of attraction, particular sexual, to other men automatically meant that you were gay. Or if you were talking to a gay man, he'd be likely to tell you that you were actually gay, but afraid, so pretending to be bi. Today in the 2010s we have trouble accepting nuanced identities and shifting desires. Back in the 1970s and 80s such identities were just denied.
So you get queer erasure no matter which way you turn. A different movie might not have done that, but at the price of having people behave in ahistorical ways.
The bigger problem with this forced split of identities is that the film goes on to set up a "straight = good; gay = bad" conflict. Most of the gay characters in the film, particularly Paul Prenter (Allen Leech), are only shown in association with various forms of depravity - manipulation, drugs, alcohol and (*gasp*) gay sex. Prenter did in fact turn on Mercury, selling him out to the tabloids, but not the way the film depicts it. I suspect that the band's hatred of what he did played some role in how the film demonizes him.
By contrast, the straight people in the film are almost entirely virtuous and there's a ridiculous plot bit where Mercury goes "back to his (straight) family" both the parental kind and the band-family by abandoning almost all his gay friends. The one exception is Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker) who is reduced to a sexless boyfriend role. In fact, Hutton and Mercury were lovers from their first meeting and Hutton had no apparent objections to Mercury's polyamory; in fact, the two lived for several years with other of Mercury's partners.
Probably the worst historical distortion of the film, even though it remains the most moving, is the way Mercury's AIDS diagnosis is handled. Because the film is building toward a Live Aid climax, Mercury is given his diagnosis shortly before that show, and immediately tells the band. In fact, he got diagnosed two years after (though I remember rumors flying after the performance) and he didn't officially tell his bandmates for another two years after that. Jim Hutton's own diagnosis is just erased.
I wonder how an audience watches this, having grown up after the initial AIDS crisis. Today a diagnosis of HIV+ in any country with a modern medical system is serious, but unlikely to be catastrophic. In the 80s it was a death sentence. As Mercury makes his dejected way out of the clinic post-diagnosis he passes another man - a boy, really - who has visible skin lesions. Do people see that and understand coinfections that occurred with late-stage HIV disease? Do they understand how men would spend money they couldn't afford on theatrical make-up thick enough to hide such lesions so they could go out in public and not see revulsion on everyone's faces? Do they realize how many young gay boys and men made their way to San Francisco seeking the freedom to be who they really were, and instead found mass death staring them in the face?
I don't know how you'd make that into a movie; if you did, it certainly wouldn't be a Freddy Mercury biopic.
So, yes, Bohemian Rhapsody plays extremely fast and very loose with historical truth. And yes, a true-er biopic could be made, if you were willing to sacrifice the music because the surviving straight men of Queen won't have it. I'm not sure a Freddy Mercury film would be at all meaningful without the music. So this is the film we got, and it has its truths mixed among its fantasies and like its subject it is complicated and hard to talk about in simple terms.
There are really three kinds of things you can say about this movie and I'll say a bit in each category.
1. It's a much more affecting movie than I expected. It's also better than I had feared it would be. A good argument can be made that Rami Malek should get a Best Actor nod for this work. Malek is in virtually every scene, and brings to life a complex, difficult, incredibly charismatic character full of flaws and contradictions. By contrast, the other band members are flat cut-outs, lacking anything like even a backstory.
Whether Malek's character resembles the real Mercury, is faithful to the deceased rock star, or is a terrible distortion is a matter of much debate. Regardless of which thing you believe, Malek sells it. I cried a lot at this movie, much more than I expected to. I'm told that Malek's staged Live Aid performance is shot-for-shot what Mercury did then; my memory is hazy after all this time, but some bits seem very familiar.
2. This movie is a PG-13 telling of a real-life X-rated story. It's impossible to tell a true-to-life version of Mercury's story and retain a PG-13 rating. His drug use is mentioned maybe twice, and seen a couple times but otherwise avoided. The entire gay sex scene of the time is curtained off behind lurid red veils. Most of his relationships are simply elided, leaving him with only two significant relationships in the film. Having multiple overlapping lovers of multiple genders is not a PG-13 story, so there's that.
Much of the criticism I've read of this film falls into the "but they should have made this other movie instead" camp. That's not an unfair thing to say, particularly if you believe that there's no way to be honest and not horribly distort Mercury's life and legacy by making it PG-13. On the other hand, you have to critique the movie that's in front of you and if you accept that it's going to be PG-13, they did a number of things well. You get a rock legend film with some of the greatest rock music of its generation and that is not a thing to take lightly.
3. This movie really does play HORRIBLY fast-and-loose with the characters and events it portrays. There are plenty of public biographies out there and even a cursory reading of a Wikipedia page will tell you that no, that character didn't come into his life there, and no he didn't actually do that thing and to a significant degree this sort of ahistoricity is the film's most damning characteristic. More behind the cut because it's all spoilers from here.
The first conundrum has to do with Mercury's orientation/identity. When the movie's first previews came out, there was considerable concern this film would completely straightwash him. In fact, it does not. It paints Mercury as gay, which is itself a couple kinds of problematic.
At one point in the film, after experiencing obvious attractions with another man, Mercury says to Lucy Boynton's Mary Austin that he thinks he's bi. She immediately tells him, "No, you're gay."
This is part of Problem 2 - acknowledging Mercury was attracted to/had relationships with men and women would have made the film more complex and less PG-13. The denial is problematic in that it plays into Hollywood's ongoing bi erasure. On the other hand, it's Mary speaking the truth she sees. She's probably wrong, but that's allowed. A woman who thinks she's being pushed aside for a man may well see a claim of being bi as an excuse or diversion or a way to soften an "I don't want you that way anymore" blow.
Historically, it's also sadly accurate. As I struggled to have a bi identity in that time period I heard exactly that language, multiple times. Any expression of attraction, particular sexual, to other men automatically meant that you were gay. Or if you were talking to a gay man, he'd be likely to tell you that you were actually gay, but afraid, so pretending to be bi. Today in the 2010s we have trouble accepting nuanced identities and shifting desires. Back in the 1970s and 80s such identities were just denied.
So you get queer erasure no matter which way you turn. A different movie might not have done that, but at the price of having people behave in ahistorical ways.
The bigger problem with this forced split of identities is that the film goes on to set up a "straight = good; gay = bad" conflict. Most of the gay characters in the film, particularly Paul Prenter (Allen Leech), are only shown in association with various forms of depravity - manipulation, drugs, alcohol and (*gasp*) gay sex. Prenter did in fact turn on Mercury, selling him out to the tabloids, but not the way the film depicts it. I suspect that the band's hatred of what he did played some role in how the film demonizes him.
By contrast, the straight people in the film are almost entirely virtuous and there's a ridiculous plot bit where Mercury goes "back to his (straight) family" both the parental kind and the band-family by abandoning almost all his gay friends. The one exception is Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker) who is reduced to a sexless boyfriend role. In fact, Hutton and Mercury were lovers from their first meeting and Hutton had no apparent objections to Mercury's polyamory; in fact, the two lived for several years with other of Mercury's partners.
Probably the worst historical distortion of the film, even though it remains the most moving, is the way Mercury's AIDS diagnosis is handled. Because the film is building toward a Live Aid climax, Mercury is given his diagnosis shortly before that show, and immediately tells the band. In fact, he got diagnosed two years after (though I remember rumors flying after the performance) and he didn't officially tell his bandmates for another two years after that. Jim Hutton's own diagnosis is just erased.
I wonder how an audience watches this, having grown up after the initial AIDS crisis. Today a diagnosis of HIV+ in any country with a modern medical system is serious, but unlikely to be catastrophic. In the 80s it was a death sentence. As Mercury makes his dejected way out of the clinic post-diagnosis he passes another man - a boy, really - who has visible skin lesions. Do people see that and understand coinfections that occurred with late-stage HIV disease? Do they understand how men would spend money they couldn't afford on theatrical make-up thick enough to hide such lesions so they could go out in public and not see revulsion on everyone's faces? Do they realize how many young gay boys and men made their way to San Francisco seeking the freedom to be who they really were, and instead found mass death staring them in the face?
I don't know how you'd make that into a movie; if you did, it certainly wouldn't be a Freddy Mercury biopic.
So, yes, Bohemian Rhapsody plays extremely fast and very loose with historical truth. And yes, a true-er biopic could be made, if you were willing to sacrifice the music because the surviving straight men of Queen won't have it. I'm not sure a Freddy Mercury film would be at all meaningful without the music. So this is the film we got, and it has its truths mixed among its fantasies and like its subject it is complicated and hard to talk about in simple terms.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-30 10:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 08:23 pm (UTC)I am in favor of you contacting them to find out.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-30 04:10 pm (UTC)There were some good moments of pointing to the hidden rest of the iceberg of his lifestyle, but as Freddie said showing it would have made for a XXX movie.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 08:22 pm (UTC)Since my knowledge of Mercury's life has been mostly gained from reading various analyses of this movie and its relationship to reality, may I ask what Prenter actually did? I haven't seen this particular nuance mentioned.
I heard about the bi-erasing (of which it sounds as though Mercury narratively switching back and forth between "straight" life and "gay" life is just another part) from
no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 09:37 pm (UTC)As I noted in the review, I'm really torn on the issue of this particular bi erasure. It is super historically accurate. I think the film could have corrected it, but to do that would've required introducing some of Mercury's other relationships and complicating the story. I don't like it and at the same time I don't see how to fix it.
Malek just got a Golden Globe nomination and I hope he wins. It was a stunning re-creation.