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nmtoscano
18 months agocogfxz
18 months ago“Bohemian Rhapsody” offers nothing of Mercury’s childhood in Zanzibar, his schooling in Bombay, his lifelong devotion to rock and roll. The movie shows no years of dedicated practice or earlier musical life or ambition; his sole primordial effort is a song that he scribbles on a piece of paper and keeps folded up in his pocket while working, as a young man in London, as an airport baggage handler. Mercury, who played piano and guitar, is of course depicted as being possessed of a formidable vocal technique, a remarkable near-operatic voice—but it’s presented as a natural gift that’s also a curse. He was born, as Freddie says, with four extra incisors, and the larger oral chamber is the reason for his large vocal range. Freddie first shows off that range in a parking lot outside a club, where he’s trying to get members of a local band to take one of his songs. But the band has just lost its lead singer, and so Freddie does a spontaneous audition for them—not, however, before they make fun of his facial deformity and suggest that it’s an insurmountable obstacle to his becoming a band member, let alone its front man.
A protruding mouth isn’t the only trait for which Freddie endures insults. Born Farrokh Bulsara, he’s an ethnic Parsi, a descendant of the Zoroastrians who fled Persia for India more than a millennium ago; in Great Britain, he’s frequently insulted as a “Paki.” (At his airport job, he meekly replies that he’s not from Pakistan.) He’s also a bisexual man in a country that had only recently decriminalized homosexuality, at a time when it was widely considered shameful, or at least indecent. And he’s from a poor family whose struggles he relates to discrimination. In one of the movie’s exemplary scenes, Freddie is at home with his parents, planning an escape into music (and declaring that his name is no longer his given one of Farrokh but, rather, Freddie); his father instead preaches to him a credo, exhorting him to pursue “good thoughts, good words, good deeds.” Freddie’s retort isn’t a variation on “boring”—it’s, “And how has that worked out for you?” His father’s virtuous modesty hasn’t brought success in the face of prejudice; Freddie’s bold self-assertion is meant to do so.
When the band’s music begins to crystallize, Freddie masterminds its path to success. He decides that the band should sell its van to finance the recording of an album, and, in the studio, he orchestrates its production as well as the unusual studio techniques with which they create it. He gives the band the new name of Queen; he arranges the crucial meeting, with Elton John’s manager (Aidan Gillen), that will put the band on the map; and, at that meeting, he sells the manager on the band’s future hit-making successes. The scene offers Freddie one of the script’s great arias, on the subject of his ambitions, as he tells the businessman that he’s playing “for the outcasts in the back” because those are the people with whom he himself identifies.
The direction of the film (credited to Bryan Singer, who was fired late in the production and replaced by Dexter Fletcher but is granted sole credit) is often oddly denatured, flip, and incurious, and its lack of vision keeps the movie far short of its—and, above all, of Malek’s—finest inspirations. (The filming of Malek’s onstage performances as Freddie, which are chopped to bits and reduced to cliché-riddled snippets, is particularly insensitive.) But at its best the film is spare and clarifying, and ideologically unambiguous: its strength is in the positioning of Mercury as an artist who confronts opposition throughout society—including from the very institutions that he needs in order to succeed. The script offers Freddie another great aria to deliver, to a record-company executive (played by Mike Myers), in which he declares his ambition to make music with the power of opera, “the wit of Shakespeare, the unbridled joy of musical theatre,” intending to offer “something for everyone.” “We’ll speak in tongues if we want to,” he says. The song “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which the record company hesitated to record and then wouldn’t issue as a single, of course became a hit, at which point the movie offers a remarkable montage featuring quotes from reviews of the song, all negative. The very source of Freddie’s popularity—his keen insight into the humiliations and the frustrations of listeners, their strivings and their dreams, their search for love and visions of stifled grandeur—made him rich, famous, and artistically fulfilled, but critically derided.
For that matter, it’s only in those moments of performance, of communion with people who, each in their own way, share his sense of oppression and humiliation, that Freddie feels himself to be truly himself. His joy in performance is a joy in solidarity, and his life offstage can hardly match it. (He speaks of his partying life as a quest for distraction from the “in-between moments” when “the darkness comes back in” and, later, explains his drug use: “Being human is a condition that requires a little anesthesia.”) Yet for his success he’s not just beloved—he’s also subjected to the aggressive prying of gossip-mongers and paparazzi, the brickbats of critics, and the betrayal of intimates. And then he discovers that he’s sick; he’s diagnosed with aids; he realizes that he’s dying.
Boobooz
18 months agoI must say that i wasnt a fan of the movie " Bohemian Rhapsody" in my perspective kind of dragged on and didnt seem to pinpoint the actual struggles of Freddie Mercury as i would have thought that it would outline. I actually fell asleep part way through the movie and ended up waking up as the credits were rolling across my screen.
I would not recommend this movie personally.
oatman_a
18 months agoL4980738l
18 months agoA5736064n
18 months agoThere is no lack of material to work with, given Queen’s stratospheric rise and Mercury’s tragic fall – he died from Aids-related illness in 1991. Not to mention the on-the-face of it improbability of a straight, white rock band fronted by a flamboyant, gay man of Asian descent. Perhaps as a result of the personnel changes, Bohemian Rhapsody struggles to find a fresh way to tell its story. It begins with Zanzibari immigrant Farrokh Bulsara forsaking his traditional family and racist 1970s smalltown for the glamour of rock’n’roll, then skirts dangerously close to Spinal Tap territory, what with microphone-stand malfunctions and old-school industry execs telling our be-mulleted quartet what to do.
But even at this stage it feels like the story is being told with the benefit of hindsight. Malek’s Mercury seems to arrive fully formed and entirely confident that everything will work out, and some of the dialogue is just too on the nose to ring true (“there’s no musical ghetto that can contain us”; “I won’t compromise my vision any longer”). All of which almost cheats us of the anticipated first-act rush of success.
The singing voice is apparently an “amalgamation”, not Malek’s own, but on stage he apes Mercury’s strutting, virile bravado with dynamic conviction, particularly in the climactic recreation of Queen’s legendary Live Aid performance. It’s a feat of impersonation.
The real problem is how to handle Mercury’s off-stage life. On the one hand, there is the story of Mercury’s relationship with Mary Austin, played by Lucy Boynton. They begin as lovers and even become engaged, although it is as clear to her as it is to us that Mercury is bisexual, if not gay. The film’s most moving scene is where Mercury admits to this, and to his complex feelings of love for Mary. “I want you in my life,” he tells her. “Why?” she replies.
But on the other hand, there’s also Mercury’s bromance with the other members of Queen to address. Two of them, Brian May and Roger Taylor, co-produced the movie, after all (plus the band’s manager, Jim Beach). Sacha Baron Cohen allegedly walked from the movie when May outlined a story to him where Mercury’s death comes halfway through, “and the band goes from strength to strength”.
A bolder film might have explored the relationship between Mercury’s hedonism, his mostly closeted sexuality and his on and off-stage personas in a more nuanced way. Or at least taken its cue from Mercury’s own songbook and played it with some melodramatic abandon. This is a man who responded to his Aids diagnosis with songs like Who Wants To Live Forever? and The Show Must Go On, after all. As it is, this one seeks to tick the biographical boxes and wrap everything up neatly with a redemptive finale. That comes via the Live Aid performance, which could be either seen as an impressive technical feat or an extended karaoke session, but at least ends the story on a high. Bohemian Rhapsody honours Mercury the showman but never really gets to Mercury the person.
vitaliminya
18 months agocarmen-20008
18 months agoIn 1975, Queen recorded her album A Night at the Opera, but decided to leave EMI executive Ray Foster when he refused to publish the six-minute song "Bohemian Rhapsody" as the album's first single. Freddie makes Capital Radio DJ Kenny Everett make the song debut by airing it. Despite having mixed reviews, "Bohemian Rhapsody" becomes a massive success. Shortly after giving Mary an engagement ring, they end their relationship when Freddie reveals that she is bisexual. He begins a relationship and labor with Paul Prenter, the second representative of the band.
Pink03
18 months agoAdriannaBurge
18 months ago