Mercurial Freddie: A Queen story arc in the hit film, Bohemian Rhapsody

We save the movies for our favorite larger-than-life heroes- that's Freddie Mercury! Rockin' time, sweet date.

The story of Bohemian Rhapsody from Fox jibes closely with biographical Queen lore. Freddie was a sweet guy, prone to life in huge, dramatic, colorful strokes, and it's fair to say, this was because he wrestled with the tedium and unrest of life off stage. I've long thought the adoration and adrenaline and bombast of a fist-pumping live show is surely such an addiction, it's really little wonder those who attain its heights find life away from the spotlight nearly unbearable. The gifts wrapped up in the making of a song are an internalized transporting feeling that rivals, and for some, surpasses the stage. But for rock's super-talented full-blast front man, the stage was also a place where he could be loved, seemingly unconditionally, and his shared creative prowess with Queen, known and loved. But there are things about a person that are terribly lonely without a constant companion. I love having a cat as much as the next guy (and his affection for his cats actually helped land this film all the more squarely in my own delight). But the heart of this film is about Freddie and the concept of "the love of my life"- revealing his vulnerability and gentleness, to be sure. The mammoth stardom of a 70s rock god, however, has shown itself many times over to be cruel to intimate relations.

Especially if you already know his story the way I did going in, I feel I've not told you anything knew, but I know I've spoken something basic about how many of you feel about Freddie, Queen, stardom, and the tragedy of not only the shadows of homosexual life in those perpetually closeted days, but the additional complications of true love for a bisexual person. ON that matter, I may have more to say. But here, I will not. It's Freddie's movie, about drifting into and out of a creative nucleus, the family bond, how kids and developing a personal life takes its toll on most families, all the moreso ones not tied by blood, customs, and common lifestyles. "Don't Stop Me Now" is such a joyous sounding tune, but I came to see its darkness, chasing after the fairy lightness of Freddie's heels. All those good times can equal running from ennui, and worse, from self-discovery. If you've ever been hurt by someone who tried to live free of responsibility, you may find it all less glamorous. From his perspective: When you are offered a chance to live hedonistically, without regard to sacrifice of self for the sake of others (the way Family can ask and elevate), you have no gravity to make a compact of tension with your transcendent power. The more freedom you seem to have, the less free it sometimes feels. If you lose the authentic opportunity to relate, your freedom's only a fantasy to envy. We find ourselves as much in service as we do in our liberty. But if no one walked free of day-to-day duty, perhaps the loss to us all would be the greater.

But it's for us to muse on the Queen that never was. It was this movie's job to tell about the Queen that Was.


So, Bohemian Rhapsody: The Movie.

First, your actors are spot-on. So much of it's well-documented that I feel it couldn't or didn't take artistic license with being very ...what's that quality that elevates scripts sometimes? It stuck to sounding like what everyone really said, which, at least you had some fairly witty participants. We were not disappointed in the slightest at the theater. I felt the emotional reality of key moments and am a massive fan of the soundtrack. I actually bob my head and pump my fist to these songs, so I was going to love that aspect, going in! It will play excellently on VH-1, true. They dramatized as much of the story as they could without it dragging, and wisely avoided trying to reproduce meeting Bowie
It's somewhat melodramatic, but that was the name of the game, since it's a quasi-musical. I'm always inspired watching scenes about putting together great songs. You got a genuine sense of mercurial Freddie- and we weren't going in as critics, anyway.

The origin story of at least one key Queen song, by each member, generously shares the credit for the band’s diverse genius. Their other musical contributions and tensions are well-depicted, especially considering the movie’s dedication to Mercury’s point of view.

It's moving in places, never dull, fairly true to what I've read of Queen- and we had an involving, great experience!

Yeah, even if it was just a mash-up of kitsch and Queen, it'd be worth watching... not a lovely fairy tale but things end as feel-good as possible. Well, fairy tales come to think of it were originally quite scary! I could see a person being hard on it, but I never planned to read those reviews. :-D The bad guys are maybe a bit too clear cut for some tastes but their motivations were realistic. If they'd invested a bit more in the motives of the love of Freddie's life, Mary, they still might not have made their relationship much clearer...love and friendships are funny, and people need what they need, that's a fact. It's such a clean biopic arc, but it's a commercial film and not an Art film. I'm glad it's been a hit!

I think you can see the Singer influence in shots like the one that rolls through the tour bus and out the back window over partied-out Roger Taylor. It's one of the only really unconventional moments visually. The 70's-style montage, fonts, animation, everything, is the other. There's already enough captivating visually in watching faux-Queen strut their stuff!

There's probably some argument about the seedy depiction of 1980 'clone culture' but that's how I learned it myself from pro-gay writers. Freddie was complicated...he never set out to live as a movement's icon. A good conversation can follow seeing this, but a good time can be had the whole time you watch!


So, it's not a movie with a lot of new insights, and maybe it's tethered to its inspiration too deeply to be very experimental or artsy. But it's succeeding as a commercial film for many reasons: After nearly thirty years, we miss Freddie Mercury, and recognize how irreplaceable he is. It's not the first movie to discuss the alienation of Genius, Stardom, nor, by the lights of its day, unconventional sexuality- but these things come together in the middle of such a satisfying, changing soundtrack! It's held together, despite its dual directors, by the star turn of Rami (Mr. Robot) Malek. He morphs through the different Mercury looks with brilliant costumery and make-up, to arrive at such a dead-on interpretation of the man by the time they arrive at the Live Aid climax- which is as good as any ever in the history of biopics! A grand statement, to be sure. But you would not be off-base considering that twenty minutes in real life a contender to be Rock's greatest moment of humanistic Salvation, a contender for the peak experience arena rock ever had to offer, in both delivery, internal narrative, and purpose.



Rhapsody- which contains the genesis of that epic tune, even its critical failure upon release- is loaded with one of the strongest catalogs of songs in pop music history- aside from its memorable hits we've lived with all our lives, they even reference a line from my favorite ever Queen album cut, "Spread Your Wings." It succeeds because it carries within it a recognizable set of conversations. It's going to be, for more people than not, an introduction to the band behind the mask, the tyro beneath the tiara. It's emblematic, to me, of the complications that arise from a life, not only of a certain gender role fluidity, but of preference fluidity, a conversation that's only fairly recently become commonplace, as we've shed the desire to place people under labels. It's still important, too, as a large part of society's still very uncomfortable with that idea. It's a story in part about where a man can turn when he must deny his complete identity, regardless of fame. It's a story about not understanding what you ask of the love of your life, and cliche as it may also sound, one about never being able to like yourself when the admiration for whom you are known to be seems shallow. Would Freddie have found service to bringing gay life to light, to humanizing gay people, or moreso, smashing the barriers of love for whomever you want to love, a liberation worth the career-crashing implications? Would he have been the pioneer of a lifestyle of true freedom? Can we read his interpretation of homosexuality, for the longest time, as somehow one requiring debasement and clone-like erasure of one's dignity?

Now I'm Here...Now I'm There

It's a conversation too large for even this quasi-musical to encapsulate. Remarkable aspirations, though, and quite coherent, even if, like Mercury himself, we don't seem to stop long enough to contemplate the motivations and feelings of others. I think I admire it all the more for what it captured, rather than deride it or nit-pick it for what it could not. Art is meant to raise questions; it's rarely at its best when it opts to tell us what to do. Sometimes we find examples in our heroes. Maybe the one way to relate to this titanic talent is in seeing him a all-too-humanly trying to find his own way, in a time and place more devoid of honest conversation. It's too easy to judge him for not spending his decline as an activist for those dying in the shadows of plague misunderstood and so pointedly considered a superstitious punishment for our lost boys. To change him after the fact into a paragon of anything but briliant performance and a cohort to one of pop song writing's classic teams- why, you'd simply have to create a new character. And then, you are shed of all that brilliance and the heartbreak cannot be the gift to us it truly is, as given so generously by this movie.

There's so much you'll never know without being tested, even if you think you feel a certain way, or want some type of life, or want to be part of something less conventional in life or creativity. If the commercial slickness of the story seems to resolve in a too-pat happy ending like some Hallmark flick, the denouement is known to be such a sad one, as Freddie struggled to the very end of his life to shoot the video for "The Show Must Go On."

The pressures that crystallized Freddie Mercury will never be replicated. He's not a case study. He had outrageous, if baroque, talents. A baroque Farouk. It' s nothing new to say he was in tension with the legacy that shaped his existence at every turn. Fame like that was never going to stay at that peak forever, even if he became a continuing celebrity or even continued writing new songs with or without Queen, like the enduring Elton John. Elton lived to see a way to devote himself to others as well, and finally found happiness. Maybe we cannot help but loathe ourselves for achieving so much more freedom than the masses will ever know, in part because of how divorced from relating we become, or how possible it becomes to lose one's self in materialism. If AIDS had not dimmed his living flame, it's possible to see a Freddie at peace. Would it have been a respite in the end, to leave the addiction of fame and its sycophants and glamor, possibly sacrifice it all for a chance to speak one's truth? To stop and learn it, rather than flitting from one chain reaction after another? Less we forget, Queen was indeed a done deal in the minds of many; even with the ever-evolving sound, so impressively versatile, the time was coming when their sun would not shine at noon.

There's a fun moment leading into the movie's climax where his ever-active opposition within Queen, Roger TAylor, tells Freddie "you're a legend." (It's fair to infer Freddie resented the wink to Roger's infidelities as he seemed to have all the things Mercury really wanted. Well, except cats.) Freddie magnanimously tells Roger and all his fellows in Queen "you're all legends...I mean, I'm a legend, yes, but..."

No matter what Freddie had chosen, Queen were already legends.