I watched the Queen film last night, and I have to say: not a fan. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huuuuge fan of Freddie Mercury, and a medium-sized fan of Brian May; I just don’t see the reason for all the hype. It’s almost as if awful, ham-fisted, or half-baked art about beloved legends like Mercury is made on purpose. The director knows full well that no one dares besmirch the name of a rock god. So, attaching said rock god’s story to a shit film is a keen way of garnering undeserved authorial praise.
Rami Malek’s performance is no great feat, either. Based on all of his pin-pupilled acceptance speeches and his jittery aloofness throughout the film itself, it’s clear that the guy is not hiding his Adderall/coke problem very well. Yes, the film implies that Mercury experienced similar issues with addiction—thought, for a movie set mostly in the mid-to-late seventies, there’s nary a white line in diagetic sight; but Malek performs that way even before the rock star-cum-addict stage in Freddie’s life. The actor is obviously gakked out from Scene One, making loading luggage onto an airplane seem more akin to an exercise in eye-bulging. Also, the costume prosthetics make his facial features seem exaggerated and caricatured, and not as traits oozing with sensual imperfection that Mercury so adeptly and coyly manipulated to work as part of his Byronic persona.
Granted, Bohemian Rhapsody is mythos and not documentary, but the film takes quite arrogant liberties with facts and reality. Mercury was not diagnosed with AIDS until two years after Live Aid. He didn’t meet Jim on the morning of the historical music festival; and he didn’t grow up working class. He was posh, as were his bandmates, who had the capital to attend school for careers in physics, electrical engineering, and dentistry. These (and many more exaggerations) provide a misleading portrait of a man who was brilliant, anyway. So, why bullshit?
Perhaps the most egregious reimagining, in my opinion, is the depiction of Mary. I don’t know if this is a thing in Hollywood at the moment, but what is with all these movies about gay men using selfless, long-suffering straight women as a means to find themselves sexually or emotionally (and then, to varying degrees, discard these women after such epiphanies take place)? Call Me By Your Name achieves something similar to this, and it bothers me. It’s a trope that doesn’t need to be nurtured for a variety of reasons—least of all because it’s already the overarching trope in films with heterosexual male leads. Why is the woman-as-emotional-wet-nurse phenomenon accepted as doctrine? Portraying such a relationship with the male lead as gay does not diminish the fact that a woman onscreen—yet again—only exists as a helpmate, a walking wastebasket into which the male protagonist can dump his feelings and saunter away unscathed. And don’t give me that, “At least he bought her a house!” bullshit. Yeah, he also made her stay up all night blinking the goddamn lights for him in said manse, like a prisoner in a fucking lighthouse. WTF?
If you want to watch Bohemian Rhapsody, listen to Queen’s Greatest Hits, and simultaneously play literally any romantic drama from the past fifty years on mute. Oh, and throw in a way-too-long reenactment of Live Aid for the final twenty minutes of it. That’s it. You’re welcome.
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