Bohemian Rhapsody
Year: 2018
Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Lucy Boynton, Ben Hardy, Tom Hollander, Gwilym Lee, Allen Leech, Rami Malek & Joseph Mazello
Runtime: 134 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 27/11/20
Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Lucy Boynton, Ben Hardy, Tom Hollander, Gwilym Lee, Allen Leech, Rami Malek & Joseph Mazello
Runtime: 134 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 27/11/20
I don’t pretend to know a lot about music, in fact I’m quite content in saying that I know barely anything other than I like what I like regardless of the genre. I’m terrible with artist names, song names, album names, years of release, or any info regarding the artists’ personal lives or even intricacies of how the band functioned. But something I can say is that I bloody love Queen.
They were one of the first bands I can remember actively seeking out their music for, and I would sing along to all of them constantly, permanently engraving the lyrics into my memory. Of course by the time I was born, Queen frontman Freddie Mercury had already died and the band ceased to function how they used to. But for me having a limited amount of songs I could access and almost all of them great made the band so much more special to me.
I loved the stage show ‘We Will Rock You’, and for years I longed for a film adaptation. So whilst Bohemian Rhapsody is not that in the slightest, it is a tribute to Queen, to Freddie, and ultimately to the fans who adored their music so much.
Farrokh Bulsara (Rami Malek), an immigrant from Zanzibar, works at Heathrow Airport as a baggage handler and feels as though he doesn’t belong. He wears strange clothes, sings weird songs he wrote to himself, and is ridiculed for having a particularly large overbite.
He’s been following a band called ‘Smile’ for some time and after one of their gigs he impresses them with his vocal skills, in need of a new lead singer the band take him on. Despite Farrokh’s peculiar performances, his talents allow the band to grow in popularity exponentially. He adopts the name Freddie Mercury, and the band changes their name to Queen.
The rest is quite literally history, which Bohemian Rhapsody picks and chooses what it tells, what it shows, and what it ignores, to present a history of Queen and Mercury that is emotionally engaging for fans of the band, but only seems to scratch the surface of what really happened and makes everything appear too easy and glossy.
They were one of the first bands I can remember actively seeking out their music for, and I would sing along to all of them constantly, permanently engraving the lyrics into my memory. Of course by the time I was born, Queen frontman Freddie Mercury had already died and the band ceased to function how they used to. But for me having a limited amount of songs I could access and almost all of them great made the band so much more special to me.
I loved the stage show ‘We Will Rock You’, and for years I longed for a film adaptation. So whilst Bohemian Rhapsody is not that in the slightest, it is a tribute to Queen, to Freddie, and ultimately to the fans who adored their music so much.
Farrokh Bulsara (Rami Malek), an immigrant from Zanzibar, works at Heathrow Airport as a baggage handler and feels as though he doesn’t belong. He wears strange clothes, sings weird songs he wrote to himself, and is ridiculed for having a particularly large overbite.
He’s been following a band called ‘Smile’ for some time and after one of their gigs he impresses them with his vocal skills, in need of a new lead singer the band take him on. Despite Farrokh’s peculiar performances, his talents allow the band to grow in popularity exponentially. He adopts the name Freddie Mercury, and the band changes their name to Queen.
The rest is quite literally history, which Bohemian Rhapsody picks and chooses what it tells, what it shows, and what it ignores, to present a history of Queen and Mercury that is emotionally engaging for fans of the band, but only seems to scratch the surface of what really happened and makes everything appear too easy and glossy.
It’s no secret that Freddie Mercury led an extravagant life that many at the time (and probably even many today) drew issue with. He was a party boy; he drank excessively, he was a heavy drug user, and his sexual escapades seemingly never ended and that is the lifestyle that killed him, slowly and painfully. But Bohemian Rhapsody doesn’t dwell on this for long, or even in that much depth. It prefers to insinuate rather than inform. For instance, Freddie’s long-time friendship with Mary Austin is given much more depth than any of the relationships he formed with his male lovers. Could it be that the filmmakers were afraid to portray Mercury’s homosexuality in a negative light? That despite the relationship he has with Mary Austin was damaging, that wasn’t what killed him so that can be more easily shown? That’s certainly what it feels like.
Even the history of Queen isn’t given all that much depth, they seem to rise from half empty gigs in pubs to sold out international tours without any difficulties or roadblocks. In fact it’s portrayed that everything was sunshine and daisies until Mercury decided to sign a contract for two solo albums. But it’s an enjoyable watch nonetheless as we are shown how some of their most iconic hits like Bohemian Rhapsody & I Want To Break Free were created.
Rami Malek is without a shadow of a doubt the best thing about this film in his portrayal of Mercury. Malek has an aura and a presence so powerful in any scene that he is in that he simply overpowers every other performance seen in the film. The films climax in particular, 1985’s Live Aid concert performance, is simply breath-taking to watch as Malek commands attention and performs as if it were the last performance he was ever going to do.
Whilst there are certainly other notable performances such as Ben Hardy as drummer Roger Taylor, and Tom Hollander as Queen’s lawyer turned manager Jim Beach; they pale in comparison to Malek.
For a band that always defied expectations and set about to do anything other than what could be deemed a safe bet, Bohemian Rhapsody is extremely safe. It doesn’t do anything that’s likely to offend, or even anything that’s particularly innovative. It’s the price you pay for making a biopic about people that are, for the most part, still alive and involved in the filmmaking process. But it is still a film that is enjoyable, that gives you a general idea of how things played out over Queens nearly twenty year reign, and provides one of the greatest performances in recent memory from Malek’s interpretation of Mercury.
Even the history of Queen isn’t given all that much depth, they seem to rise from half empty gigs in pubs to sold out international tours without any difficulties or roadblocks. In fact it’s portrayed that everything was sunshine and daisies until Mercury decided to sign a contract for two solo albums. But it’s an enjoyable watch nonetheless as we are shown how some of their most iconic hits like Bohemian Rhapsody & I Want To Break Free were created.
Rami Malek is without a shadow of a doubt the best thing about this film in his portrayal of Mercury. Malek has an aura and a presence so powerful in any scene that he is in that he simply overpowers every other performance seen in the film. The films climax in particular, 1985’s Live Aid concert performance, is simply breath-taking to watch as Malek commands attention and performs as if it were the last performance he was ever going to do.
Whilst there are certainly other notable performances such as Ben Hardy as drummer Roger Taylor, and Tom Hollander as Queen’s lawyer turned manager Jim Beach; they pale in comparison to Malek.
For a band that always defied expectations and set about to do anything other than what could be deemed a safe bet, Bohemian Rhapsody is extremely safe. It doesn’t do anything that’s likely to offend, or even anything that’s particularly innovative. It’s the price you pay for making a biopic about people that are, for the most part, still alive and involved in the filmmaking process. But it is still a film that is enjoyable, that gives you a general idea of how things played out over Queens nearly twenty year reign, and provides one of the greatest performances in recent memory from Malek’s interpretation of Mercury.