Queen have always evaded me. Much like Michael Jackson and ABBA, their work always struck me as the musical equivalent of Disneyland memorabilia: kitsch souvenirs of a time that never really was. But few can argue with the magnetism of Freddie Mercury’s on-stage persona. His subsequent battle with AIDS put him in that unique catchment area between musical icon and social martyr. This is ostensibly the stuff that biographical dreams are made of. But the hagiographic nightmare that is Bohemian Rhapsody makes one fundamental flaw. It assumes that the ultimate Queen Concert film is as enticing a prospect as the definitive Freddie Mercury biopic. It isn’t.
This is a Queen celebration aimed squarely at the large swathe of the public that really couldn’t care whether it existed or didn’t. This is a film for anyone with the vaguest attachment to this music, someone who wants it kept that way. That’s why it has been such a monumental success. It operates on the most superficial possible level. Sure, it’s replete with historical inaccuracies, but that’s hardly the major drawback here. Ray was a film swimming in hokum that still managed to capture that inherent cinematic truth that the best of biopics aspire to. Any chance of deeper self-examination is eschewed for self-aggrandisement on a laughable scale. This is the problem with owning the keys to your own narrative representation. The scene in which Queen define their musical agenda to Mike Myers’ malevolent mogul is a cringe-worthy precursor of what’s to come. Myers’ frankly embarrassing ode to Wayne’s World is a shameful piece of pop-cultural cross-pollination that these filmmakers will have to live with till their dying days.
There’s a cartoonish patina to the entire enterprise that rids the film of visual texture. It reminds me somewhat of Martin Scorsese’s ill-fated TV experiment Vinyl. And the script’s endless self-referential odes to the flexibility of their name becomes tiresome by round three. Yes, we get it, Queen is also gay-speak for hysterical queer. This movie piles on the cringe so indulgently that it begins to blur that oft precarious line between homage and parody. The problem is this: we live in a post Dewey Cox world. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was an absurd lampooning of the very same tropes that this film seems intent on reworking. The familial conflict with his conservative Islamic upbringing is one ham-handed example of this slavish devotion to formula.
Sasha Baron Cohen reportedly left the project due to creative differences with the surviving members of Queen. He wanted to create a warts-and-all expose of the more hedonistic aspects of the Queen experience. Everyone has heard of the possibly apocryphal tales of dwarves being used as mobile cocaine deliverymen during their most excessive parties. One would have thought that the initial acquisition of creep de jour Bryan Singer as director of this specific story would at least add some frisson to proceedings. But we couldn’t even get some of that.
This film is a living, breathing advertisement to the futility of trying to capture hedonistic excess with a PG-13 age restriction, making for some regrettable tableaux along the way. Take the now mandatory truck-stop bathroom rendezvous scene, shot with a wistful glance that would have Scarlet O’Hara screaming overkill. And the scene of Roger Taylor chewing Freddie out for arriving drunk to studio, as evidenced by Rami Malek’s prop beer. Just for the record – it’s strange to see the kid from Jurassic Park busting out the opening chords of Another One Bites the Dust. Perhaps it’s only fitting considering the prehistoric storytelling techniques we are dealing with.
But perhaps the greatest sin in this veritable shrine to inequity has to be in the film’s representation of Freddie’s sexuality. Basically the film would have you believe that there are two types of gays. The bad gays have a penchant for leather and meaningless sex. They frequent seedy bars and are there to lead our innocent Freddie astray. Then you have the Jim Hutton gays. They project a quiet dignity that is completely at odds with the wanton carnality of the bad gays. They are there for afternoon tea when the drugs and strobe-lights have become a bit jejune. Freddie Mercury was by all accounts a brazen homosexual unafraid to live his life the way he wanted. This film would have you believe that he was ashamed of his sexuality. It’s a movie about a homosexual for a decidedly mainstream audience, reasserting all the hackneyed sexual stereotypes that come with the territory.
Rami Malek’s Oscar-Winning portrayal of Freddie Mercury is no doubt the most intriguing aspect of the film. I’m just not even sure about that. I’ve had the chance to retroactively view Freddie Mercury in interviews and find Malek’s impersonation somewhat hammy. One can’t deny that he certainly captures Mercury’s on-stage theatricality, particularly in a resounding Live-Aid recreation that attempts to wipe the memories of this debacle away with Men in Black efficiency. But they couldn’t even pull that off. At least we now know that the one way to bring the fans of Millwall and West Ham together forever would be to play Queen on the intercom. Perhaps the most authentic thing in the film was the young Bob Geldof, and even that had an uncanny uneasiness to it.
Historical abortions aside, I’m at least glad that they chose to leave Freddie Mercury with a modicum of decency by not attempting to recreate his final moments on earth. Because considering the inauthenticity of what we have seen here, that deathbed scene could have been a real humdinger. Picture this: Freddie Mercury lying in bed with his friends and family surrounding him – only the good gays please, so father won’t be too displeased. He is about to utter his final words, motions towards Brian May. May leans in: “What Freddie”. Freddie just smiles and says: “You got this, you got this”.
