Bohemian Rhapsody
starring Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwylim Lee, Ben Hardy, Joe Mazzello, Aidan Gillen, Allen Leech, Tom Hollander and Mike Myers
screenplay by Anthony McCarten
directed by Bryan Singer
Rating: ♦♦◊◊◊
Blockckbuster biopic from 2018 about the British band Queen’s lead singer, Freddy Mercury. Reviewers and fans raved about this film. I didn’t particularly want to see it because, although I grew up with Queen, I never liked them very much. I watched the movie on an airplane in March because it seemed the least bad of a bad movie menu on the entertainment system. Rami Malek (who I first saw in the 2006 Ben Stiller movie Night At the Museum, directed by Shawn Levy) won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal.
I have no special regard for Freddy Mercury, even though his fans eulogize his musical genius. Mercury died at age 45 in 1991 of complication of AIDS. I remember it. The news was as much of a shock as news of the death of David Bowie in 2016. Like Bowie, Mercury kept his condition extremely private. I remember reading news of one Japanese fan who traveled to the U,K. just to stand in mourning outside Mercury’s home - sort of like how John Lennon fans stood around in mourning in front of the Dakota apartments in Manhattan hoping that proximity to a particular site might have a magical effect. Mercury’s homosexuality is deemed a significant part of his personality, but for me I reject having people’s genitals rubbed in my face. Not that I have anything against genitals. But Mercury was just too gay for me, and I resent the movie featuring that aspect of him over - or at least on a par with - the history of the band. I would have been happier with a simple band history, without the homosexuality. A person’s sexuality is really no one’s business, after all. And, I regard it merely as a minor thing. I don’t appreciate Western culture’s self-promotion pathology.
A person’s sexuality is really no one’s business.
The focus of Bohemian Rhapsody is Queen’s performance at the Live Aid concert on July 13, 1985. Queen was deemed the shows greatest performance, and the best live performance of Mercury’s career. I remember the concert - an all-star affair put together by Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Ethiopia was enduring an ongoing civil war. In the midst of war, famine struck as a result of farmers over-grazing their livestock and then rival military forces using food aide as a weapon. At the time I had little sympathy for African famine relief since the famine was so obviously and blatantly man-made. Maybe that shouldn’t matter, but …. They wanted famine, and famine is what they got. I cared little for the Live Aide concert and for other Western musical charity stunts - stupid songs like the awful 1984 song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and the equally terrible 1985 song “We Are The World.” WTF?! Arrogant, white, rich, bored rock and rollers. I still cringe when I hear them.