Bohemian Rhapsody

It's one of the oldest stories in movies:  a plucky young man, the son of immigrants, defies his parents to become a pop music star.  Along the way, he wins fame and fortune, but loses his moral compass.  In the end, the hero is jarred into recognition that he has strayed from "right thoughts, right words, right deeds" as it is expressed in Bohemian Rhapsody (2018).  He finds a way of making popular music that doesn't offend the morality of his traditional parents, re-connects with those once vital to him, and finds redemption.  This describes the plot of the new bio-pic about the lead singer of Queen, Freddie (previously Farouk) Mercury; my summary also describes innumerable other films of this kind, including one of the progenitors of the form in American movies, Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer.  The only deviation from this time-honored story is sexual:  Freddie Mercury is gay, although it takes him one-third of the movie to recognize this fact and his moral crisis is precipitated by the imminence of his death by AIDS. 

Andy Warhol said, and I am always quoting this important proposition, that all Cokes are alike and all Cokes are good.  The same truism applies to movies of this sort, whether Coal Miner's Daughter or La Bamba or The Jazz Singer in its various iterations.  The form almost always pleases although, of course, one might wish for something a little more novel or, indeed, flamboyant when it comes to Bohemian Rhapsody -- Freddie Mercury had a great, perverse sense of style and he was a gay icon before such things could be unambiguouslyrepresented (one of his MTV music videos went too far with cross-dressing and gay imagery and was banned) and, accordingly, one might expect the film about his life to be extravagant, adventurous, even, perhaps, a bit experimental:  the subject matter cries out for direction by Baz Luhrmann or, perhaps, Paolo Sorrentino.  But, in fact, Bohemian Rhapsody is conservative, even a little slow-paced, and it feels somewhat perfunctory -- it dutifully pushes all the buttons and most people will tear up once or twice during the film, but there's nothing extraordinary about the way the picture is directed or designed.  There are some excellent musical sequences, some great, if archaic-looking, montages, and lots of depravity (although the film is PG and doesn't really show anything you couldn't expose an intelligent nine-year old to.)  One of the pleasures of the genre is that it can display the moral debasement of the pleasure-seeking folks in show business while at the same time asking us to pronounce judgement on their antics -- we get our cake and can eat it too.  Here there are lots of scenes of hunky-looking lads in leather cavorting in gay bars and casting yearning gazes at one another -- at one point, when Freddy is lonely during a tour of the United States, he looks lustfully at truck driver who looks lustfully back at him; this sequence occurs while Freddy is talking to his cute blonde wife -- the impression we get is that if she had been with him to satisfy his sexual urges, Freddy wouldn't have become gay and, therefore, wouldn't have acquired his mortal illness.  Later, the film is a little less primitive in its sexual attitudes -- ultimately, Freddy confesses to his wife that he is "bisexual" although for the second half of the movie his lovers are all, without exception, men. 

I never much liked Queen.  "Bohemian Rhapsody" always struck me as a shallow and derivative rip-off of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band and some of the group's biggest hits have a manipulative, even quasi-fascist buzz about them, particularly "We are the Champions" and "We will rock you" -- both tunes that would not seem out of place at a Trump Rally.  But I enjoyed the musical numbers in the movie and, in fact, liked the songs better in the film than I ever liked them on the radio.  And there are some things about the film that are informative -- Freddy Mercury's famous over-bite was caused by the fact that he had four upper incisors instead of just two; his parents were Zoroastrian Farsi's, displaced Persians who came to England via Zanzibar.  This explains the curious reference in one of Mercury's songs to Allah -- "Bismallah" (if God wills).  Throughout the movie everyone refers to Mercury as a "Paki" although, of course, he is no such thing, but, perhaps, the use of the Muslim expression "Bismallah" was intended as a taunt to British racists who mischaracterized the young man.  The final half-hour of the film involves Mercury's decision to return to his band (he has abandoned them) and perform at Bob Geldorf's "Live Aid" concert in the mid-eighties.  This seems pretty inconsequential but the film does a good job making the negotiations with disgruntled Queen band members preparatory to the Live Aid show fairly suspenseful -- this is really the only narrative suspense in the movie.  Everything else follows the traditional pattern for music bio-pics of this sort.  The final concert sequences are rousing, although there are far too many intrusive reaction shots inserted in the film to signal how we should respond.  Although Queen was often pretentious in the manner of Pink Floyd and the late Beatles, I think they were best when performing their simplest material -- no one will persuade me that "Fat-Bottomed Girls" isn't their best tune and, indeed, one of the greatest rock 'n roll songs of all time.