It’s taken me a while to process my feelings about Bohemian Rhapsody, the recent Queen/Freddie Mercury biopic. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either. There are things I love about it, but I'll admit to being a huge Queen fan verging on the obsessive. When you're that kind of fan, you tend to devour everything about the band, good and bad, meaning that you have certain expectations when something like a biopic is announced, and even when you try to manage (read: lower) those expectations, little things can be infuriating. Some will liken this to “it's not like the book” syndrome, but it’s something deeper, because it involves real life figures.
Let me explain. There have been times when I was younger when I was disappointed by adaptations of books into films or for TV. The earliest of these would have been the adaptation of Enid Blyton's Famous Five series of books and stories into a half hour TV series. The inherent problem here should be obvoious: there’s no way a half hour TV show can contain the full plot of a children's book, much less the texture and detail, but I didn’t really understand that at the time. I felt betrayed. Similarly, the first time I saw Blade Runner, a film I grew to love, I was crushed, because it wasn’t the same as the source material, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which I will refer to as “Sheep” for simplicity. Blade Runner follows the plot line of Sheep quite faithfully, but changes some of the characters and removes some of the more obvious markers pointing to the differences between replicants (androids in Sheep) and humans, such as empathy. Ultimately, the final version of Blade Runner distils the essence of the novel well, but it was hard to reconcile until at least the Director's Cut became available.
Here’s where Bohemian Rhapsody comes in: as has been reported in numerous reviews, truth has been sacrificed for narrative propulsion (obvious examples are the shifting of the composition and recording of We Will Rock You from 1977 to the early 80s, the near breakup of Queen when Freddie recorded his solo album, which didn’t actually happen, and Freddie's HIV positive diagnosis being shifted to just before Live Aid from its actual timing in 1987-88. Like I said, I’m a bit obsessive.) Events have been time-shifted to create a more conventional biopic. Truth is, it didn’t have to be this way, as there was more than enough drama in the actual story of Queen without having to resort to standard biopic tropes. There were the management and contract nightmares that nearly bankrupted the band in its early years, from which flowed one other most spectacular kiss-offs to ever be committed to tape: A Night at the Opera's Death on Two Legs. There was the musical experimentation that was merely glossed over. There were the encounters and friendships with the likes of David Bowie and Michael Jackson, the latter of which was reported in Rolling Stone. That’s just the beginning, but already you would have a more interesting and less rote biopic.
In the plus column, you have several of the performances. Rami Malek's performance as Freddie Mercury is great. He really does a solid job of embodying Mercury and Gwilym Lee as Brian May comes across as if the producers went back in time and brought back 70s era Brian May to play himself. The resemblance is uncanny. Also of note are Lucy Boynton as Mary Austin and Tom Hollander as Jim Beach.
And thus, the conflict arises. Do I give Bohemian Rhapsody a pass for what it gets right, or do I dismiss it for the things it gets so spectacularly wrong and manufactures to forward its vision of the narrative? I’m torn. So, let me ask you: have you ever felt the same way about other biopics? Feel free to comment.
