I'd read the bad reviews about this film and then I'd seen the numerous awards that it picked up - mostly by Rami Malek for his performance - so I was genuinely interested finally to see it.
I enjoyed it, but thought that it offered a sanitised version of Freddie Mercury's life: it would take someone with the talent of Derek Jarman even to come close to a more authentic version, although I don't think that such a film would have received the approval of the rest of Queen let alone the finance needed to produce it.
I enjoyed it, but thought that it offered a sanitised version of Freddie Mercury's life: it would take someone with the talent of Derek Jarman even to come close to a more authentic version, although I don't think that such a film would have received the approval of the rest of Queen let alone the finance needed to produce it.
Bohemian Rhapsody
USA 2018 134 minutes
Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee
and Ben Hardy
“We can stipulate a few things about Bohemian
Rhapsody. We can stipulate that it’s not a great movie. We can stipulate
that, in many ways, it’s not even a very good movie. As a trite, often
laughably clichéd biopic of Queen
frontman Freddie Mercury, an enterprise that should have been as daring and
flamboyantly theatrical as its subject winds up being bowdlerized, Wiki-fied,
distortingly compressed and unforgivably conventional.
And yet.
We can also stipulate that, despite the myriad shortcomings of its parts,
the sum of Bohemian Rhapsody winds up
being giddily entertaining, first as an exercise in so-bad-it’s-funny kitsch,
and ultimately as something far more meaningful and thrilling. Every now and
then, a film comes along that defies the demands of taste, formal
sophistication, even artistic honesty to succeed simply on the level of pure,
inexplicable pleasure. Bohemian Rhapsody
is just that cinematic unicorn: the bad movie that works, even when it
shouldn’t.”
Anne
Hornaday, Washington Post
Award and Nominations:
- Won four Oscars including Best Actor (Rami Malek)
- Won two BAFTAs including Best Actor (Rami Malek) plus five other nominations
- A further 27 wins and 56 nominations
Brain May and Roger Taylor were both co-producers of the film which had a
long and complex production history involving, among other issues, a struggle
over whether the film should focus on the story of the band or should be a more
adult story focused on the life on Mercury. Initially both Sacha Baron Cohen
and Ben Whishaw had been linked to the role of Mercury with Dexter Fletcher (whose
previous work as director includes the musical Sunshine on Leith (2013) and the comedy Eddie the Eagle (2016)) to direct from a screenplay by Peter
Morgan. In November 2015 Anthony McCarten, who had written the screenplays for
both The Theory of Everything (2014) and
Darkest Hour (2017), was commissioned
to produce a new screenplay from Morgan’s outline and the film finally went
into production in 2016. In addition to the complexities of its production
history the film’s screenplay generated some controversy as a result of its
depiction of some key events in the history of Queen in the wrong order, especially Mercury’s HIV diagnosis: it is
generally accepted that he discovered that he had been infected between late
1986 and Spring 1987, and in reality he did not make the other band members
aware of this until late in 1989.
Bryan Singer is credited as the film’s director although he was fired from
the production with less than two weeks of principal photography left. Dexter
Fletcher was recalled by the producers to finish the photography and complete
the film although the credits list only Singer as director, with Fletcher’s
role being relegated to that of Executive Producer. Fletcher is currently
working on Rocketman, a biography of
Elton John which has the tagline of being “based on a true fantasy”, a
statement which hopefully will ensure that it escapes criticism for any
elements that do not reflect the historical record.
Here is the trailer:
