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"Bohemian Rhapsody," the story of Freddie Mercury and the group that he introduced, Queen, is not exactly the whitewashed biopic we feared. This is also not the amazing jumble of clichés and emotion of painting by issue, as have already shown some reviews. There are good songs and some emotional resonance.
The film, written by Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan, directed by Bryan Singer, has been in preparation for nearly a decade. Rami Malek (of the fame of "Mr. Robot") finally won the role of Mercury and he immersed himself admirably, posing and rising, painful and furious. But the movie of more than two hours is quite far from the history of warts and all the stories that we hoped to tell when Sacha Baron Cohen was written to play Mercury eight years ago.
Mercury – born in 1946 in Zanzibar, Farrokh Bulsara – represented a lot of things. He was arrogant and needy, demanding and humiliating. He also had the talent to support his ego raging: he was an extremely inventive songwriter and a superb singer with a range of four octaves. Malek captures all of this in this film and it's a witty bravura performance, both in appearance – with a facial prosthesis -, movements and sounds. (David Ehrlich of Indie Wire reported that Mercury's actual voice was used, but that it was disturbed "very slightly – with Malek's best attempt to imitate".)
But when mega-success was called, the identity of Mercury exploded and there was debauchery, Led Zeppelin-esque rock star. As Cohen told Howard Stern in 2016, "The guy was unleashed. There are stories of little people walking in the holidays with plates of cocaine on their heads!
The difference between the movie and the usual rock star story is Mercury's sexuality. Before the middle of the film, Mercury tells his common-law wife Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton) that he is bisexual. (In real life, not in the movie, she would have said, "No, Freddie, you're gay.") His main lover is his personal manager, Paul Prenter (Allen Leech), and his frequent partners now seem to be all of them. men.
But this Freddie Mercury is seen as an almost borderless PG-13 – he grabs a man's ass here and leaves the cocaine dust lying on a table. This hedonistic part of Mercury's lifestyle is evoked today – and not even that much – on a television in the background.
Do not forget that two of the three surviving members of Queen, guitarist Brian May (played by Gwilym Lee), drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) and manager Jim "Miami" Beach (Tom Hollander) are co-producers. There is a legacy to consider as well as the tour money producer, Queen + Adam Lambert (Lambert replacing Mercury as Paul Rodgers did from 2004 to 2009).
"Bohemian Rhapsody" begins with Queen coming on stage at the Wembley Arena for the 1985 Live Aid, before quickly returning to band formation, when May and Taylor form a London group called Smile. They are approached by a brass mercury who shows up and says that he will become their new singer. So ok. He renamed them queen.
The film follows roughly a linear trajectory from this point. We see Mercury clashing with his Indo-Indian family – they moved to London when young Bulsara was a child – deciding to launch his surname for Mercury. We see the group tinkering with their van and making money to record their first album. They desperately need to be seen and heard and are afraid of having to fall back on their studies. (They all met when they were students in London.)
While group members largely accept Mercury's sexuality, Taylor calls it "Gay-O" at some point and May, considering the redesigned look of the mustachioed jeans and tight-fitting T-shirt, Mercury has begun to be supposed to be in a rock band, not the Village People! "
There is a lot of melodrama and there are moans. "I like a man in uniform," Mercury told a cute waiter as the house party ended. "Me too," said the Mercury server, dressed in a quasi-military outfit. It seems that studio struggles are the impetus for the immediate creation of a great new song. The group members' objection to Mercury's desire to go "disco" disappears when bassist John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello) offers the huge hook line of "Another One Bites the Dust". parents who arrives in the morning, the group plays Live Aid. Really?!
This is where the film seems manipulative and misplaced. Unpleasant details go out, as Queen's first American tour in 1974 is described as a glorious shift from "MIDWEST USA" – as it can be read on the screen – without ever indicating that they were Mott's first film the Hoople. (It is also not noted that Brian May's hepatitis ended the tour.) On stage, they were seen playing "Fat Bottomed Girls," a song they recorded and recorded only in 1978. There is no description of their fundamental collaboration with David Bowie in 1981 on "Under Pressure" – only an excerpt is played during a tense confrontation between Mercury and his manager.
These details – confused or omitted by the writers and the director – are they important? Somewhat. They will make the queen obsessed with a queen, even if they will pass for an occasional fan.
For mega-fans, a highlight comes from the fact that the six-minute, always-mysterious "Bohemian Rhapsody" song, never explained, evolves and is hailed by the band's record label. Roy Foster, a bearded and glazed frame played by an unrecognizable and insensitive Mike Myers, insists that the radio will never broadcast it, which will lead to a rock star crisis and a broken window.
While the song becomes a huge hit and we see it playing by Queen, various lines of scathing criticism appear on the screen. Queen had the last word of laughter on that one. The song has gained an eternal cachet via "Wayne's World". (Myers, of course, played the role of "Bohemian Rhapsody," Wayne Campbell in the movie.) I can not think of any living rock fan who does not recognize it. song from her opening piano notes and that does not anticipate cheerfully the mad rush when the licks of May's sizzling guitar come into action and the tempo accelerates. And who does not think that, while all the frenzy in the song fades, the central message of Mercury is contained in the last lines: "Nothing really matters, everyone can see / Nothing really matters / Nothing really matters to me / Anyway the wind is blowing. "
The difficult moment for Mercury comes when, finally, after having previously rejected the notion angrily, he signed a solo contract and left the group in embarrassment. When the idea of playing Live Aid finally enters the orbit of Mercury, the contrite and self-flagellating singer gets organized to meet the band. They solve their differences in a flash – in the film, the desire for meeting is partially fueled by Mercury's diagnosis of AIDS, but in real life, Mercury learns its diagnosis a few years later.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" ends with a triumph, their short set at Live Aid in London. This is where we see one last time a group buried in the axes shining in all its splendor and splendor, coming out with "We Are the Champions".
It ends before the flood of media reports about Mercury's poor health. We all know that he died in 1991 at the age of 45 from AIDS-related pneumonia and categorically denied that he was suffering from the disease until he died. at the end.
It was a conscious decision, May told me in this 1992 interview.
"I think he's made the right choice," said May. "Freddie was a unique person, a truly free spirit who said," Listen, I will not be the person for whom I was raised. I will be someone else. "And he became the god Mercury, or whatever, he said to us," I am fighting against this thing, it is my problem and I have the right to fight it privately if I want. ""
None of this perspective is in the movie. It was maybe too sad like coda, but Queen continued to record until the end – at Mercury's insistence – and released four post-Live Aid albums. Closing the film with the group in full glory (reconquered) leaves some of the true arc of the history of Mercury and Queen's.
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