☆☆☆
I grew up in what could charitably be termed a pop-music-limited household; until I was 16 and old enough to drive on my own, my only exposure to what was playing on the radio was limited to the 20 minutes it took to carpool to or from school.
I was also a closeted gay kid, frightened of being found out, and, just as I started becoming aware of my predicament, pushed further into the closet by the mortal fear of AIDS.
In the midst of this confused childhood, I was more than a little aware of Freddie Mercury, who fronted a band called, of all things, Queen, and who wore cop glasses, a bushy mustache and a tight T-shirt when he wasn't wearing outrageously flamboyant costumes -- all of which both flaunted and embraced a hyper-homosexualized persona that was hypnotizing and even frightening. Was looking and acting like this expected of everyone who was gay? And yet, the supermarket tabloids implied he wasn't gay, or that maybe he was, or that perhaps he was bisexual, and all of that confused me even more: If someone so clearly gay apparently wasn't gay, if someone whose band was named Queen was actually straight or possibly straight, where did that leave me?
Freddie Mercury seemed enormously complicated, especially in the defiant way he normalized a gay appearance just as the papers were filled with news of gay men causing a new plague. What a fascinating, complex, tortured, artistic, proud, manic soul must exist behind those mirrored glasses. So, Bohemian Rhapsody, the long-in-development biography of Freddie Mercury, had not just a man but an entire era to work with, placing it all against a backdrop of social and political change, of musical growth and experimentation.
Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't, in the end, do any of that, or at least next to none of it. Never anything less than perfectly entertaining and slickly made, it is both everything a pop-music fan could want of a movie about Queen and nothing at all that will satisfy anyone searching for some kind of insight into the person behind the iconic images of Freddie Mercury.
As a docudrama, it's strictly made-for-cable stuff, hitting every key beat along the the rags-to-riches timeline and scrubbing away anything unseemly (or, sadly, interesting). Most frustratingly, most alarmingly, most discouragingly is the way it treats Freddie Mercury as a gay man. He is "movie gay" in Bohemian Rhapsody; in one scene, he is talking to his wife Mary on a pay phone outside of a truck stop in the middle of America when he sees a man entering the bathroom. Their eyes lock, filled with lust. This is how the film tells us Freddie Mercury is gay: by the prurient portrayal of the unspeakable things that men do to each other in a truck stop restroom.
Later, Freddie can't live with his one-scene struggle, and tells his angelic, sweet, patient, loving, supportive, perfect wife that he "might be bisexual." "You're gay," she assures him. And then they make a promise never to leave each other, because without her popping up from time to time, the movie will need to come to grips with Mercury's homosexuality, which it simply can't do.
Still later, Freddie goes into a gay bar, which is filled with men wearing leather, some even wearing hoods, where sex is happening everywhere, where sex is the only reason for being. Is this really how a big-budget studio film portrays homosexuality -- even in the 1970s and 1980s -- in major movies? As salacious and sleazy and undoubtedly dirty and shameful?
There is no serious attempt to explore what Freddie Mercury was struggling with, as far as his own identity goes. Nor is there ever a serious attempt to explore what that struggle did to Mercury both as a singer, a songwriter and a celebrity.
Likewise, we're never given insight into how Farrokh Bolsara turns into Freddie Mercury, other than a moment in which he tells his family that he has legally changed his name. His family, presented as fine and upstanding though staid and repressed people, seem like they'll be a major factor in the story, but once Bohemian Rhapsody is through with them, they mostly disappear. The whole movie's that way, bouncing merrily from one episode from the life of Freddie Mercury and Queen to the next, making sure to hit all the same marks that would be found in a special, two-hour episode of MTV's Behind the Music.
And that is enough for many people. The audience I saw Bohemian Rhapsody with loved it. They clapped along and raised their hands and gently sang the lyrics, and afterward they applauded and quite rightly praised Rami Malek for dominating the film with his re-creation of Mercury. They got exactly what they had wanted to see, a fun, jaunty musical that happens to have some not-so-happy moments like Mercury finding out he has AIDS and a title card that says he died of it, but why focus on those icky things when the music is so good?
Bohemian Rhapsody gets the mannerisms and general personality of Mercury right, or so I gather from what I've read of the film. He was a little guy who was always larger than life, he was not the leader of Queen but was more than "just" their lead singer (the other band members barely register as characters in this movie), and he dominated every room he walked into.
The movie adds in a few little observations like: he loved cats, he was sad, he was lonely, he thought Queen was his family, and he wanted to be friends with the wife who knew his secret. Beyond that, Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't allow Freddie Mercury even a moment to be a real person. How does he create songs? He writes them down, sometimes gets a tune in his head first. What do his lyrics to "Bohemian Rhapsody" mean, and why is it so over-the-top? There's a little observation about how poetry matters more to the listener, but that's the extent of the insight.
What about those sad, angry, lonely lyrics that open "We Are the Champions"? Nope, not a thing. What about the very public struggle to discover his own sexuality even while hiding it for the fans? Bohemian Rhapsody isn't going to go there.
It's purely a paint-by-numbers job, and it's a colorful and entertaining one. See Bohemian Rhapsody for Malek's performance and for the music. Enjoy it. It's worth enjoying.
But consider, too, all the ways it does a gross disservice to the story it's telling. When Mercury says he doesn't want to be a poster boy for AIDS, what does that mean? Why does he eschew the one opportunity to give something back to the community that helped him attain such lofty heights? What is he afraid of?
More intriguingly, what is Bohemian Rhapsody afraid of? Sure, it's worth being satisfied with the idea that Mercury is at least played as gay in a limited way throughout the film, so that the audience is getting a story about a gay musician who is still revered and idolized; at least they haven't eliminated Mercury's real self entirely. But they have blunted it to such a degree that it's all presented as acceptable. Too acceptable. Outside of a chaste kiss or two (and that scene in the truck stop), there's no desire in this film to present hyper-sexualized Freddie Mercury as a hyper-sexualized human. Indeed, apart from some drinking, Queen has to be the least sordid band in history, with other band members who live fine, upstanding, family-oriented life.
The more I think about Bohemian Rhapsody the more I have to wonder about the people who made it (fired director Bryan Singer chief among them); are they this frightened of sexuality in general, homo- or hetero- or otherwise? Because they've taken the story of one of the great crossover icons, whose death from AIDS exposed so many of the secrets he had longed to hide, and presents him as just another slightly loony singer with talent who makes it big and then gets a little lonely.
What a waste of material. Even more frustrating is that so much of what's there is so good. Malek is terrific, often disarmingly so; some complex and bewildering relationships are given just enough time on screen to make us want to see more; and the film's depiction of the music is first rate.
But, really, didn't Freddie Mercury deserve more than this? A lot more than this? As a populist biography, it may be fine -- like I said, it's at least of the quality that plays on cable -- but as a deep and unexpected look at Freddie Mercury and the rise and success of Queen, it leaves the best stuff out. You go to Bohemian Rhapsody to be entertained, not to be enlightened. Fair enough. But it should have been much, much, much more than a perfectly enjoyable jukebox musical.
Viewed November 18, 2018 -- AMC Burbank 6
1845
I was also a closeted gay kid, frightened of being found out, and, just as I started becoming aware of my predicament, pushed further into the closet by the mortal fear of AIDS.
In the midst of this confused childhood, I was more than a little aware of Freddie Mercury, who fronted a band called, of all things, Queen, and who wore cop glasses, a bushy mustache and a tight T-shirt when he wasn't wearing outrageously flamboyant costumes -- all of which both flaunted and embraced a hyper-homosexualized persona that was hypnotizing and even frightening. Was looking and acting like this expected of everyone who was gay? And yet, the supermarket tabloids implied he wasn't gay, or that maybe he was, or that perhaps he was bisexual, and all of that confused me even more: If someone so clearly gay apparently wasn't gay, if someone whose band was named Queen was actually straight or possibly straight, where did that leave me?
Freddie Mercury seemed enormously complicated, especially in the defiant way he normalized a gay appearance just as the papers were filled with news of gay men causing a new plague. What a fascinating, complex, tortured, artistic, proud, manic soul must exist behind those mirrored glasses. So, Bohemian Rhapsody, the long-in-development biography of Freddie Mercury, had not just a man but an entire era to work with, placing it all against a backdrop of social and political change, of musical growth and experimentation.
Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't, in the end, do any of that, or at least next to none of it. Never anything less than perfectly entertaining and slickly made, it is both everything a pop-music fan could want of a movie about Queen and nothing at all that will satisfy anyone searching for some kind of insight into the person behind the iconic images of Freddie Mercury.
As a docudrama, it's strictly made-for-cable stuff, hitting every key beat along the the rags-to-riches timeline and scrubbing away anything unseemly (or, sadly, interesting). Most frustratingly, most alarmingly, most discouragingly is the way it treats Freddie Mercury as a gay man. He is "movie gay" in Bohemian Rhapsody; in one scene, he is talking to his wife Mary on a pay phone outside of a truck stop in the middle of America when he sees a man entering the bathroom. Their eyes lock, filled with lust. This is how the film tells us Freddie Mercury is gay: by the prurient portrayal of the unspeakable things that men do to each other in a truck stop restroom.
Later, Freddie can't live with his one-scene struggle, and tells his angelic, sweet, patient, loving, supportive, perfect wife that he "might be bisexual." "You're gay," she assures him. And then they make a promise never to leave each other, because without her popping up from time to time, the movie will need to come to grips with Mercury's homosexuality, which it simply can't do.
Still later, Freddie goes into a gay bar, which is filled with men wearing leather, some even wearing hoods, where sex is happening everywhere, where sex is the only reason for being. Is this really how a big-budget studio film portrays homosexuality -- even in the 1970s and 1980s -- in major movies? As salacious and sleazy and undoubtedly dirty and shameful?
There is no serious attempt to explore what Freddie Mercury was struggling with, as far as his own identity goes. Nor is there ever a serious attempt to explore what that struggle did to Mercury both as a singer, a songwriter and a celebrity.
Likewise, we're never given insight into how Farrokh Bolsara turns into Freddie Mercury, other than a moment in which he tells his family that he has legally changed his name. His family, presented as fine and upstanding though staid and repressed people, seem like they'll be a major factor in the story, but once Bohemian Rhapsody is through with them, they mostly disappear. The whole movie's that way, bouncing merrily from one episode from the life of Freddie Mercury and Queen to the next, making sure to hit all the same marks that would be found in a special, two-hour episode of MTV's Behind the Music.
And that is enough for many people. The audience I saw Bohemian Rhapsody with loved it. They clapped along and raised their hands and gently sang the lyrics, and afterward they applauded and quite rightly praised Rami Malek for dominating the film with his re-creation of Mercury. They got exactly what they had wanted to see, a fun, jaunty musical that happens to have some not-so-happy moments like Mercury finding out he has AIDS and a title card that says he died of it, but why focus on those icky things when the music is so good?
Bohemian Rhapsody gets the mannerisms and general personality of Mercury right, or so I gather from what I've read of the film. He was a little guy who was always larger than life, he was not the leader of Queen but was more than "just" their lead singer (the other band members barely register as characters in this movie), and he dominated every room he walked into.
The movie adds in a few little observations like: he loved cats, he was sad, he was lonely, he thought Queen was his family, and he wanted to be friends with the wife who knew his secret. Beyond that, Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't allow Freddie Mercury even a moment to be a real person. How does he create songs? He writes them down, sometimes gets a tune in his head first. What do his lyrics to "Bohemian Rhapsody" mean, and why is it so over-the-top? There's a little observation about how poetry matters more to the listener, but that's the extent of the insight.
What about those sad, angry, lonely lyrics that open "We Are the Champions"? Nope, not a thing. What about the very public struggle to discover his own sexuality even while hiding it for the fans? Bohemian Rhapsody isn't going to go there.
It's purely a paint-by-numbers job, and it's a colorful and entertaining one. See Bohemian Rhapsody for Malek's performance and for the music. Enjoy it. It's worth enjoying.
But consider, too, all the ways it does a gross disservice to the story it's telling. When Mercury says he doesn't want to be a poster boy for AIDS, what does that mean? Why does he eschew the one opportunity to give something back to the community that helped him attain such lofty heights? What is he afraid of?
More intriguingly, what is Bohemian Rhapsody afraid of? Sure, it's worth being satisfied with the idea that Mercury is at least played as gay in a limited way throughout the film, so that the audience is getting a story about a gay musician who is still revered and idolized; at least they haven't eliminated Mercury's real self entirely. But they have blunted it to such a degree that it's all presented as acceptable. Too acceptable. Outside of a chaste kiss or two (and that scene in the truck stop), there's no desire in this film to present hyper-sexualized Freddie Mercury as a hyper-sexualized human. Indeed, apart from some drinking, Queen has to be the least sordid band in history, with other band members who live fine, upstanding, family-oriented life.
The more I think about Bohemian Rhapsody the more I have to wonder about the people who made it (fired director Bryan Singer chief among them); are they this frightened of sexuality in general, homo- or hetero- or otherwise? Because they've taken the story of one of the great crossover icons, whose death from AIDS exposed so many of the secrets he had longed to hide, and presents him as just another slightly loony singer with talent who makes it big and then gets a little lonely.
What a waste of material. Even more frustrating is that so much of what's there is so good. Malek is terrific, often disarmingly so; some complex and bewildering relationships are given just enough time on screen to make us want to see more; and the film's depiction of the music is first rate.
But, really, didn't Freddie Mercury deserve more than this? A lot more than this? As a populist biography, it may be fine -- like I said, it's at least of the quality that plays on cable -- but as a deep and unexpected look at Freddie Mercury and the rise and success of Queen, it leaves the best stuff out. You go to Bohemian Rhapsody to be entertained, not to be enlightened. Fair enough. But it should have been much, much, much more than a perfectly enjoyable jukebox musical.
Viewed November 18, 2018 -- AMC Burbank 6
1845
No comments:
Post a Comment