Best Pictures #46: 2018
(91st) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee
“Is this the real life?”
My enjoyment of Bohemian
Rhapsody corresponded directly with whether or not a Queen song was being
played. The big budget Freddie Mercury/Queen biopic is at its best during scenes
of the band in the recording studio or performing on stage. Rami Malek stars as
Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. He emulates the way Mercury moved his body during
performances and reproduces his captivating stage presence with a surprising
degree of success. The scenes between the music, however, for Malek and
everything else in the picture fall flat.
Queen was not an average band so it’s perplexing and
flat out disappointing that the movie telling the story of the band and its
flamboyant lead singer is so by the numbers and full of biopic clichés. Every
scene feels like it has been transposed from any other musician biopic. There
is the scene where the band has a rough start to a gig but wins over the
audience. There is the scene of the lead singer being offered a solo album
deal. There is the scene
of a press conference where reporters only want to ask about the lead singer’s
private life and not the new album. There is the scene of a record label
executive telling the band that their most famous song will never be a hit.
This scene is an eye-rolling low point mainly because the record executive who
tells Queen that teenagers will never rock out to "Bohemian Rhapsody" in their
cars is played by Mike Meyers (who starred in Wayne’s World where he famously rocked out to "Bohemian Rhapsody" in
a car). There is even a scene where a fatal illness is signaled by a character coughing
a few drops of blood on a tissue. This is the kind of biopic Bohemian Rhapsody is.
When he’s not imitating Mercury on stage, Rami Malek does a good
enough job in the dramatic scenes but the oversized fake teeth he wears to look
more like Mercury are distracting. Yes, Mercury did have a noticeable overbite
but these false teeth make Malek look more like Bugs Bunny. The bland, basic
biopic script doesn’t give Malek, or anyone else, much to work with in those
dramatic non-music scenes. Mercury’s sexuality isn’t played down but it also
isn’t fully explored. A montage of the band on tour (typical quick shots of
tour buses, roaring crowds, etc.) shows Mercury, at the time married to Mary
Austin (Lucy Boynton), glancing at and checking out other men. It’s unclear if
Mercury is just looking at these men longingly or if he’s sleeping with them. The movie also never makes clear if the
wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing record producer Paul (Allen Leech) is Mercury’s lover
or just a hanger-on. We do get to see Mercury working through his inner
struggles by composing some great songs, namely “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
The most original and exciting scene for me was the
recording session of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” We see Brian May (Gwilym Lee) playing
his guitar solo all alone in the empty barn serving as their recording studio. Then
we cut to the rest of the band in the control room listening what the solo sounds like mixed with
the rest of tracks. Mercury is like a conductor getting his bandmates to
sing at the top of their vocal registers. First, they sing alone in the
recording booth, then together, then all of those separate tracks are mixed
together to create the final product. I once accompanied a musician friend when his
band recorded in a real studio. This is exactly how a band records a song but
I’d never seen a recording session portrayed this way until now.
Bohemian Rhapsody
is definitely a Freddie Mercury biopic rather than a Queen biopic but each of
the other band members get their due. After all, Queen is the only band that
has had each of its members admitted separately to the Songwriters Hall of
Fame. The bandmates argue about whose song should go on the album, whose song
should be the single. These are some of the better scenes in the movie. I have
to admit it was refreshing to see a movie about a musician that acknowledges
and gives credit to other members of his band. Straight Outta Compton, about the rap group NWA, focused on 3 of its
6 members (a 7th member wasn’t included at all in the movie) and in the Johnny
Cash biopic Walk the Line, which I
like very much, Cash’s two long time bandmates barely have any lines at all.
Nominees: Graham King, producer
Director: Bryan Singer
Screenplay: Anthony McCarten; story by Anthony McCarten,
Peter Morgan
Cast: Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee
Production Companies: 20th Century Fox, New Regency, GK
Films, Queen Films
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: November 2nd, 2018
Total Nominations: 5, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Actor-Rami Malek, Editing-John Ottman;
Sound Editing-John Warhurst, Nina Hartstone; Sound Mixing-Paul Massey, Tim
Cavagin, John Casali
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