Direction: Bryan Singer
Country: UK / USA
Bryan Singer’s biographic drama film about the legendary rock icon Freddie Mercury reveals directorial weaknesses on top of relevant historical and narrative inaccuracies. It’s also mounted with a stilted pose that becomes more noticeable in the parts meant to be funny.
The good side of it is that you can have a glimpse into Mercury’s extrovert character and some more insight about the tense state of affairs with bandmates Brian May (Gwilym Lee), John Deacon (Joe Mazzello), and Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy). Unlike these, the characterization of the Queen’s vocalist, especially when young, was overdone, a fact that didn’t hamper Rami Malek from giving a respectable performance. Worse than that was the characterization and posture of EMI executive Ray Foster (weirdly played by Mike Myers), which felt extremely unnatural.
Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything; Darkest Hour) and Peter Morgan (Rush; The Queen) wrote a story that covers Mercury’s successes and failures with unchanging tone. Even with all the predicaments and untidiness, there's a lot of info for Mercury's fans: the family environment, his early marriage and lifelong friendship with Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton), the discovery of his bisexuality, the financial and musical quarrels with the other members of the group, the ups and downs with his double-dealing boyfriend Paul Prenter (Allen Leech), and the final phase of his life, when he was already ill, alongside new partner Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker), here wrongly portrayed as a hired party servant when he was a hairdresser in real life.
While watching it, I got the impression that the scenes had been fabricated to please the crowds and delivered in a reckless mode. Although displaying some curious details, the emotional depth was never enough to make Bohemian Rhapsody stand out. It turns out that this was a film of abandonments and departures, facts that obviously weighed in the final result. Allow me to clarify that Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) took the leading role but left the project in 2013, allegedly because of divergences with Queen's members. In December 2017, it was Singer who dropped out due to clashes with the cast and crew. English actor turned director Dexter Fletcher (Wild Bill; Eddie The Eagle) replaced him.
A closer look reveals dissonance in this orchestration. Hence, you won’t find a forward-thinking film about the forward-thinking band that once mixed opera with rock music to create an unforgettable symphony. And that’s because, more than anything, Bohemian Rhapsody is ostentation, offering limited musical insights and dramatic tension within a stereotyped approach. Queen’s burning music is all that's left.
