‘Bohemian Rhapsody’: Freddie deserved better

 The movie ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ doesn’t do anything all that exceptional

Freddie Mercury

I probably hated this movie much more the first time. Now after seeing it a second time, I just see it as an underwhelming overall experience.

First point to note off is that, it not being true to life, I assume is for artistic reasons. Changing certain things, leaving out others; in fact, Freddie Mercury, while flamboyant in nature, wasn’t an extrovert as he is painted in the film. Dramatic license is taken and that’s mostly fine as long as the film itself, by the end, is a good film and isn’t so off that it doesn’t represent the person they are portraying.

Style

The film is going for style over realism, which isn’t an issue. They are clearly painting Freddie’s life as a glamorous one, and it reflects the way he decides to live his life, as portrayed in the film. It’s large, the camera swoops and takes in grand shots of Mercury and as he himself glides across the stage, which is reminiscent of the real man. The sets are wide and spacious, even in situations where they really shouldn’t be (the barn house). The soundtrack is almost filled with Queen songs, so this may be one of the best soundtrack albums of all time (if you divorce the album from the movie).

The colours are vibrant and pop out at you, leaving no moment looking drab in tone. There is a clashing moment which is during live aid. Most of the movie is shot in a jewel tone, which clashes with the lighter more off-white tone of the live aid performance at the end of the film. One may argue that the darker shades through the movie are representative of an emotion or a thematic element and it turning to the lighter shade towards the end represents Freddie’s sense of closure or openness towards that concept. I don’t argue that, because I just think they wanted a certain style, but didn’t want to change anything for the live aid performance.

Acting and performances

The acting is complementary to that style, nothing is taken too seriously and given the depth of exploration that it may need. Everything is explored in dialogue and reaction shots so the acting being less grounded might not be the best complement as it’s hard to take those concepts seriously when the characters mostly act in sarcasm, surprise or despair. Every band member in the story has some character flaw (Freddie has multiple and Roger Taylor sleeps around) except for Brian May who is a perfect angel in the story, and I don’t know why. John Deacon’s character also seems to be devoid of flaws, but he is treated with some sense of apathy, enough so that he isn’t as much of an angel as May is in the story.

Let’s focus in on one performance in particular, because of how much people talk about this performance when they see the movie (or even when they didn’t see the movie); Rami Malek’s performance as Freddie Mercury.

There is a tick in Rami Malek’s voice which makes it hard for him to perfectly evoke the voice of Freddie Mercury when speaking, but that doesn’t affect a performance to me. The voice he went with was consistent through the movie and was really all that is necessary in evoking a believable character, much like how Joaquin Phoenix evoked Johnny Cash. They both get the accent and the general bodily motions of the character right, so it works. Not everyone needs to be Christian Bale. Malek’s mannerisms are very flamboyant, extravagant, and matches his tone of voice and the characterisation of him in the film.

When Freddie sings, considering I’ve heard a fair amount of Queen myself, I can tell when they overdub him with the original song and when Rami himself is singing, and considering Rami barely does sing in the movie, it’s not something to swing to comparisons with the original and judge the overall performance from that perspective. In fact, Live Aid itself is pretty much a lip-synced performance.

So, let’s judge another aspect of Freddie which Rami had to develop and evoke – his stage performance. I already mentioned Rami managed to nail a flamboyant attitude, and in performing, he does that too. He swings about the stage and does his thing. One thing that isn’t explored as much is the strength and confidence to which Freddie Mercury helmed his posture on stage. Yes, Freddie at the time was winging it, it isn’t choreographed, but he exuded a level of strength and confidence that only a professional dancer would be able to capture. 

Rami is mostly dancing about on the stage with the flexibility of Mercury, but not the strength in which he performed. The live aid performance is probably the most evident of this, in fact Rami seems less free than he normally is on stage, and that’s mainly because it’s a recreation of a performance through choreography as opposed to an attempt at evoking a stage persona like he does with prior performances. In the live aid performance, if you were to watch a side by side comparison, you’d be able to notice a difference in performance strength between the two.

Aural posture as he’s performing isn’t too spot on. He does trumpet out when singing for the most part as Freddie did, but he doesn’t pull back his lip corners on certain phrases. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if the performance wasn’t lip synced. At that point you’d need to do a very good job of making it look like his voice is coming out of your mouth. This is also the case when Rami is singing himself. 

Based on how much this film is edited, making very little use of long shots, it wouldn’t surprise me if almost all of Rami’s singing is ADR’d, and after seeing the film, I’m almost 100% sure that is the case. This again isn’t a problem if his mouth formation still is consistent with the voice, which most of the time it is, but there are enough few select moments that I could notice it. I did notice this really on second viewing, so I don’t think this affects the viewing experience that much, especially considering his stage presence really overshadows it, but I still feel the need to mention it.

Rami Malek’s performance is still a credible job overall and, in the end, I think he deserves that Oscar nomination for his efforts, but I feel slightly underwhelmed. One could argue that it’s impossible to do what Freddie did, but he could get close, and he did, but I still can see room to get even closer. I will say, not everything is at the fault of Rami Malek. It takes a team to craft a great performance so, this is a critique of the performance, and not Rami Malek himself.

Editing

Ah, here we are, the bane of my existence apparently. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ has some grand editing choices and has a massive amount of style, which is probably why it is a nominee for Best Editing. However, when it comes down to the basic editing used to maintain pacing of a scene, it’s not good. It feels off. It feels more like a team spent a lot of money and the best editors to cut the transitions, and the basic scenes were given lower priority. Moment to moment cutting is not at all as organically put together as I’d expect from an average movie, let alone one that has this much of a push behind it. 

They don’t have the rhythm of a conversation; jokes don’t land as well as they could because it’s edited like so. Characters have witty lines, but because of the editing, it sounds less like characters speaking amongst each other, and more like actors saying lines that they were instructed to say. I cannot blame the actors for this because the timing of their dialogue is not in their hands. 

Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue in ‘The Social Network’ is great, but it wouldn’t be as affective without David Fincher’s perfectly timed quick cuts. This film has that same style of dialogue (obviously not as well written as ‘The Social Network’) but has a badly paced style of editing that does not complement this dialogue.

An example of when the editing could really have done great in communicating something, and in a way, it did achieve that, was in the transition from initial reviews of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ to the band playing to a large audience. The song begins and it’s the slower beginning choir section, it pushes into the window of the studio it’s playing from, and there is a recreation of the music video. 

On screen, negative reviews of the song pop up, calling it pretentious, and a bit too far, which are actual reviews of the song at the time. And then there is a hard cut to Queen performing the song to an audience. If they cut to the large audience as opposed to the band, it would have been a great communicator of how much Queen was misunderstood by contemporaries at the time and how much they managed to resonate with the new age of that era, especially considering they cut immediately to the heavy metal portion of the song, demonstrating the energy and enthusiasm for the song at the time. 

So, while they managed to communicate the enthusiasm regardless of the critical response, they didn’t really seal it by showing how much of an impact the song had on an audience, and in turn the band, as opposed to just the response of the band. But otherwise transitions are only used to show the band’s large touring scope, and that’s when Queen’s music is mostly played besides performances. It’s cool to look at and especially listen to, but it doesn’t do anything much for communicating the grander narrative of the film.

Considering this movie is based on a rock star, and demonstrates the band’s music, why wasn’t the editing in time with the music? Even in the grander stuff it doesn’t feel as timed as much which is a shame, as it could allow the visuals to complement the music a lot more, ala Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (which is maybe one of the best edited movies ever made (wasn’t even nominated for best editing [‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was (why?)].

Edit: This video by Thomas Flight is pretty good at demonstrating the issues with the film’s editing so I’m going to link it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn8Fd0TYek.

Story and storytelling

The story is about various aspects of, specifically, Freddie Mercury’s life. Very much like ‘Walk the Line,’ they both start with the most iconic performance of each artist’s career. In ‘Walk the Line,’ it was Johnny Cash’s performance at Folsom Prison, and with Freddie Mercury, it was Live Aid. And then they cut to the beginning of their journey. So, in both they try to communicate that the movie is about; how this person got to this point in their respective careers; how they got to the highlight. 

It’s also interesting that both movies’ titles are the name of each one’s most famous song (even if ‘Walk the Line’ makes more sense as the title of its story than, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’). Both also include a recreation of their most famous performance; however, ‘Walk the Line’ had to recreate it aurally while inventing the visual look, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ had to replicate it both aurally and visually. That’s probably the last time I’m going to reference ‘Walk the Line,’ but understand that ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ took a lot of inspiration from that film’s framework.

The story does not pick a single aspect of Freddie’s life, opting to just tap on a lot at once. The movie is about him and the growth of his band, the band’s success, challenging music industry conventions and the band’s effect on the world. The movie is also about a Zanzibar kid who is misunderstood by his father, dealing with his sexuality, his love life, illness and fame. What I’m mostly trying to say with that is it’s about a lot.

However, it does not explore any one of those things enough; just touches on them and does nothing further. The most egregious of this would be the relationship with his father. His father in the beginning says twice to Freddie, “Good thoughts, good words, good deeds”, clearly a marker for Freddie to either prove to his father he is capable of these things, or for the film to show us that he isn’t. 

They should have, over the course of the movie, established Freddie’s concern for the issue, be it in rejecting or achieving what his father wants of him. Instead, the film decides to forget his father ever said that, until near the end. In a scene near the ends, Freddie visits his parents but has to leave so that he can go perform at Live Aid. And when he tells them that, he says [paraphrasing] “It’s for a concert helping the starving children in Africa”, followed by, “good thoughts, good words, good deeds”, which is insanely contradictory to why the character wanted to do Live Aid. He does Live Aid because he wants to perform with his band, never at any point does he state that he wants to do it to help those in need. 

The movie itself expresses this performance as being highly televised and emphasises that “over 1.5 billion people will be watching”, not “oh this will help many children in need”. If Freddie had even in one line said “our influence may get people to watch and phone in to help those kids in Africa” before he goes visit his father, it would be shallow writing but at least it’s something. 

The film, instead emphasises how important this is for Freddie’s career and relationship with his band, not emphasises how it will help those in need; Hell; it doesn’t even establish that he’s doing it for his father’s sake. Like an “oh shit, I should say something that will make him happy”, and not actually an arc his character he goes through. It feels like a white lie he tells to keep his father happy, which would be an interesting character flaw, but the movie doesn’t treat it as such.

They try to present a camaraderie within the group when talking with executives and managers, and then follow that up with animosity within the group where they have arguments about being a band and such, where they talk like it’s a ‘betrayal’ of trust that was built point of view. Problem being that they do not establish a genuine relationship within the group in the beginning; they do not establish that trust that was apparently broken later in the film. 

They point out that they met, then they have their first performance (where they introduce the bassist like he is an extra in the scene) and during the scene they demonstrate a disconnect between the band and Freddie for a moment before they see the audience enjoying it, and they feel happy about it. Then they cut to one year later. As far as relationship development, they manage to let us know that they are happy with his performance, through mostly reaction shots during the performance. But they do not lay a foundation for what they feel about his person. They have fun moments as the movie goes on, but it doesn’t feel like it’s playing on a strong foundation.

In the story they decide to overlook Freddie’s life in Zanzibar and start straight from the point where he has embraced a flamboyant persona and embraced an accent that he was not raised with (as mentioned by his sister who is also evidence of how he should have been speaking). Without saying much, they manage to establish how much he doesn’t identify with that person who he used to be. In fact, when he is referenced to as a ‘paki’, he corrects them only by saying “I’m not a paki”, never saying “I am from Zanzibar”. 

More so, when the family pulls out old family photos, he resists letting his new friends and family see it, before going to the piano singing ‘Lazing on a Sunday afternoon’ trying to drown out the sound of them talking about his past life. The song choice is also interesting because the lyrics go into a life of glamour and extravagance, not the rustic and down-to-earth life which he used to lead. It’s subtle but it communicates a good amount of Freddie’s feelings on that issue without being obvious about it. 

A line “I don’t care about my past life!” would have completely ruined it, but they keep it subtle, as necessary. Upon looking into it, Freddie’s mother claims that Freddie himself was proud of his Parsee roots, but we’ll never really know since the man himself isn’t here to answer that question. So, keep that in mind.

Freddie’s sexuality is explored in this story, and it is very, odd. There is a moment to which Freddie himself demonstrates an interest in men which is while he’s on his tour of America. Stopping at a gas station he watches a man walk into the men’s bathroom and the film lingers on the shot of the sign as Freddie gazed into it while talking to his wife. Communicating to us his interests being diverted from his wife to ‘Men’ as the bathroom sign suggests. This is good at conveying, subtly, that he is beginning to become interested in men.

However, the next moment is when he’s writing the song ‘Love of my life’ at the piano and dedicating it to his wife. It’s in this scene that Paul forces a full kiss upon Freddie, which Freddie holds for a bit but then repulses from and proclaims something against it. Freddie’s future relationships with men is now defined and reflected as being forced upon him, not as something he explored himself. 

Freddie states once that he is bisexual and it’s the only time he mentions it. This is immediately followed by his wife saying “Freddie, you’re gay.” Which, fine, she thinks that, but they never address whether she is wrong, or he is right later in the film. They write him like he is gay, never interested in women which is why when he slaps a woman’s ass at some point, it feels out of place because they never establish that he is bi after the “you’re gay” scene; they just go through the whole movie with him being with multiple men. 

So, by the end, the film itself manages to successfully establish that Freddie Mercury is gay. Problem with this is, he isn’t; he’s bisexual. So, I am far more inclined to believe, they failed at communicating, establishing and exploring the fact that he is bisexual.

Conclusion

This film doesn’t do anything all that exceptional. Performances were alright, Rami Malek being a highlight, and all aspects of the film making are average at best. “Why was it such a success?” I ask. And upon hearing about what people think, listening to what people thought about the film, knowing that Rami Malek didn’t do a horrible job being Freddie Mercury, I feel like the one person that made this movie a massive success and made people so happy about it was, Freddie Mercury himself. 

His legendary status amongst the world is the singular reason as to why this movie is received so well. Listening to all of Queen’s superb music once again, and celebrating the life of a great musical icon, the movie just didn’t have to be the worst, to be an unabashed success. But as the title suggests, Freddie Mercury deserved a lot better. 

– Review by Akshan Cader