Freddie Mercury could have been played by Borat.
At one point in the star-crossed production of the Queen movie, which would eventually become Bohemian Rhapsody, producers had cast Sacha Baron Cohen, the provocateur behind Borat and other characters, to play Queen’s lead singer Freddie Mercury, but he has told more than one interviewer that the project fell apart when “someone” in the band told him that the middle of the story would be the point of Freddie’s death, and the remainder would be the rest of the band preserving their legacy. And Cohen told that person that no one would pay to see that. Which is too bad, because Cohen would have had some advantages in the role: he is at least as tall as Freddie Mercury, has a natural overbite, can actually sing, and shares Mercury’s fondness for disturbingly tight underwear.
Instead, the role went to Mr. Robot star Rami Malek, and the movie did indeed become focused around the life and death of Freddie Mercury. It works because Malek almost single-handedly carries the movie, projecting not only soulfulness and vulnerability but the cheeky, ambitious personality of Freddie Mercury the rock star. I say “almost” because Malek plays off a great cast including Gwilym Lee as a dead ringer for guitarist Brian May and Lucy Boynton as Mercury’s longtime girlfriend Mary Austin.
The overall problem at the core of this movie is that it’s very obviously “Hollywood biography” and is too obvious in linking the accidents of history into a dramatic theme. For instance, it explains Mercury’s signature stage trick of wielding a half mic stand by saying that at his first gig with the band, the microphone stand was adjusted for the height of the previous lead singer, and Mercury broke the stand trying to shorten it. (In truth, Mercury was somewhat taller than Rami Malek.) Mercury’s relationship with his dad is a stereotype of Conservative Immigrant Father versus Westernized Son, and the fact that the family dynamic is resolved when, on the day of the Live Aid concert, Freddie finally looks up Jim Hutton (whom he hasn’t seen in years) and then takes him to meet his parents (whom he also hasn’t seen in years) to introduce him as his boyfriend, just before putting on the greatest rock concert in history, is a bit too pat.
This didactic approach also extends to the necessary matter of Mercury’s final illness and its causes. I have no problem with saying that Mercury’s lifestyle led to him getting AIDS, just as most people get lung cancer or type II diabetes from their lifestyle choices. (Indeed, given what the ’70s were like, it’s amazing that David Bowie and Lou Reed lived as long as they did, or that Iggy Pop is still ALIVE.) Bohemian Rhapsody depicts a certain tragedy in Mercury’s life in that he was very much in love with Mary, but she realized probably before he did that he was truly gay, not bisexual. And while the movie makes clear that Mercury didn’t need any encouragement to pursue men on the road, the central conflict is set up with the introduction of Queen’s assistant manager and Freddie’s eventual boyfriend, Paul Prenter (the unfortunately named Allen Leech) who pushes Mary out of Freddie’s life and manipulates him into firing Queen’s first manager and eventually leaving the band. (This is another rewrite of history, since Mercury did do two solo albums but did not leave Queen either officially or behind the scenes.) And the disco-influenced “Another One Bites The Dust” (which was actually written by John Deacon) is turned into the backdrop for a montage where Mercury and Prenter tour London’s gay leather underworld, and when the song abruptly ends, Mercury has started to develop a cough.
The thing is, this didactic approach is also what makes this movie work, when it works. There are several scenes where characters are trying to make a pitch to other characters and in the process they involve the audience. Like when Brian May is telling the other band members how he wants to write a song – “We Will Rock You” – that turns the crowd into part of the band. Or how the band is trying to explain to a record executive how their use of opera will expand the horizons of rock music. Or how they tell their first manager that what makes Queen special is “four misfits who don’t belong together playing for other misfits who don’t belong anywhere.” Even Prenter gets a sympathetic moment when he confesses to Freddie that growing up in Belfast as both gay and Catholic, he never felt like he belonged anywhere. Almost as if gay people and straight rock fans had that much in common.
But that again gets to the matter of presenting Mercury’s decline, which is unnecessarily confused by making the Live Aid concert the framing device for the story. Historically, Live Aid was an event held in July 1985, but Freddie Mercury didn’t get tested for HIV until April 1987. But in the movie, Freddie gets his diagnosis just after hearing that the Live Aid/Ethiopian famine relief project was a thing, and it sets up the premise that the whole thing is an attempt to make his life right by patching up the rift with his bandmates (which again, is either simply exaggerated or just bullshit) and then confessing to them during rehearsal that he’s dying of AIDS. Now given that Roger Taylor and Brian May were consultants on this movie (John Deacon has refused to be involved with the ongoing Queen projects), and given that there are facts on record that can be looked up, I am disappointed that the band would allow Mercury’s story to be presented in such a manner. Even in the script, Freddie tells his bandmates that he doesn’t want to be “a poster boy or a cautionary tale.”
So when gay journalist Kevin Fallon referred to Bohemian Rhapsody as an “insult” that “borders on character assassination” I may not share his anger, but I can understand it.
And yet: The acting is great. The script shows the camaraderie within the band. And it’s QUEEN. Bohemian Rhapsody shows what was so great about this music in the first place and the winning performances show why anyone would care about these people, all leading up to the Live Aid sequence where the larger-than-life presentation is finally in accordance with history.
So my otherwise wholehearted endorsement of this movie is tempered by the point that as a biography of Freddie Mercury, it’s simplistic and misleading. But it’s an awesome show.
I suspect that to Freddie, that’s all that would have mattered.