Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

Director: Bryan Singer
Writers: Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan
Music by Queen (duh!!)

Cast:
Freddie Mercury- Rami Malek
Brian May-  Gwilym Lee
Roger Taylor- Brian Hardy
John Deacon- Joseph Mazzello
Mary Austin- Lucy Boynton
Paul Prenter- Allen Leech
Jim "Miami" Beach- Tom Hollander
Jim Hutton- Aaron McCusker
Ray Foster- Mike Myers

Awards and Nominations:
OSCAR- Best Actor- Rami Malek
OSCAR- Best Sound Editing
OSCAR- Best Sound Mixing
OSCAR- Best Film Editing
nomination-OSCAR- Best Picture
Golden Globe- Best Actor (Drama)- Rami Malek
Golden Globe- Best Picture (Drama)

Write-up:

Man, was this movie hyped when it was coming out last year? The only thing that kept me from seeing it in theaters was "A Star is Born." I'd just been to the theaters to see it and I didn't feel like making the 20-30 minute trip down the road to the theater to see it. 
It was also disheartening later to read all of the people online saying how it was inaccurate and they took way too many liberties for the sake of Hollywood. Seriously, what a way to ruin it for all of the people who really liked the movie... 
Then the nominations started coming out. But even before that, I already had a strong feeling that Rami Malek was going to come away winning the Best Actor Oscar for the movie. And sure enough he did. And it was really great for him- just to see someone new win and what they'll end up saying during their acceptence speech. It was like Eddie Redmayne for playing Stephen Hawking. You get a really strong feeling about a certain role/actor when it's announced that screams Oscar and it's great to see the end result of it. 
It was also really cool at the Oscars seeing the movie win all of these awards. Plus, Adam Lambert and Queen performing to open up the show. I was not an Adam Lambert fan AT ALL when he was on American Idol and I'm still thrilled Kris Allen won over him. But I'd seen him perform with Queen on a Yahoo! Livestream. The two fit together so well. But the one song that they didn't perform together was the namesake of this movie. And it's just as well that wasn't the case. It is Freddie's song, after all. 

So my dad saw the movie in-flight, as he often sees these movies. He was mystified about all the awards buzz because of the naysayers saying it was inaccurate. He sees the movie and does a complete 180. It only happens maybe 25% of the time, but he'll say a movie is so good we have to buy it on DVD ASAP. 
It also kinda helps that it has great music. My dad is a sucker for movies that have great music. Especially if it tells a good story. I might never have seen "Purple Rain" if he hadn't recommended it. Not the biggest Prince fan out there (he only bought the soundtrack for the two songs he really liked), but he respects people who write their own music and play it well. He also saw Led Zepplin at the Garden State Arts Center (now the PNC Arts Center) in 1973 where they did "Stairway to Heaven"- a song he says is the best song ever written. He owns the album with the song on it, but I don't know how he feels about the other songs. He's also one of those people that says any music that came out after the 80's is complete garbage. I'm starting to adopt that cynical POV myself. 

Coming back to Queen, I'm not the hugest Queen fan, but I like a lot of their songs. My first encounter with them was "Bohemian Rhapsody." I remember Constantine Maroulis performing it on "American Idol" and for years, I labored under the illusion that it was his song... I don't know why... but they played it at all of the school dances I went to in high school: two concert choir banquets and senior prom. I remember everyone on the dance floor stopping and singing all of the words together and I'm thinking "I can't believe how everyone is into this song, it only just came out"... 
yeah, I had no idea that this was an old song from 1975 and everyone in my class knew the words because its inclusion in "Wayne's World" made it infamous. And I was the one loser that didn't know the words to the song and wasn't singing along or bobbing their head to it. With the degrading music scene in the 2000's, I was like a satellite without a planet. I had no sense of musical identity and it wouldn't be until 2007 I started to get a grasp of it. Lately, I'd been trying to learn more about music from before my time to get a better understanding of it. But I really should put some of my Beatles albums on my iPod to get into something I'd been putting off forever. 

As for the movie itself, I'd seen it twice and I needed to see it at least twice before I could write about it. Because there's a lot to cover. Last night after watching it the second time, I must have spent 20 minutes going through all the IMDB trivia about it. I was curious to see why so many people were in an uproar about the inaccuracies of it. 
As far as I could tell, there was nothing criminal about the liberties that were taken. There were bits and pieces where the drama was kicked up to fit the script or serve the storyline within the movie. Ultimately, Brian May and Roger Taylor were producers of the movie, they signed off on everything... they did this out of love for Freddie and his memory, and that's the most important thing at the end of the day. 
With the success of this movie, other musical biopics are sure to happen, but as long as the right people are involved in them, everything will come out ok. But if it was Prince and they were trying to do this treatment with him...well, that's its own post for another time.

Ok, enough side-tracking:
The entire builds up to the Live AID performance, where all of these musical artists came together to perform for charity. And according to the move, Queen saved the entire event. To the other artists, it was just a performerance. Nobody was really paying attention or donating a lot of money until Queen came on to perform. 

But the movie follows Freddie Mercury as he joined the band, they developed their sound, how their most famous songs were created... 
it's also a sad look at Freddie Mercury's life, the loneliness that comes from being a big rock star. You can have a house full of people and host parties and be surrounded by drugs and alcohol, but it's a very isolating life. The unfortunate thing was that it was enabled by the band manager, Paul. While Freddie wasn't as isolated as the movie made him out to be when he was working on those solo albums (and Paul wasn't fired until after Live AID happened), Paul took advantage of Freddie's celebrity to fulfill his own desires, whether it was attention or money. 
Even sadder, both of them contracted AIDS as a result. (It wasn't mentioned in the movie, but Paul contracted it in real life and actually died a few months before Freddie did). You could argue that because of Freddie's sexuality and the fact the transmission of AIDS (already something not entirely understood at the time) was more prominent in gay men in the 80's because safe sex practices weren't taken into account as often as it was for the typical hetrosexual relationship- he might have still contracted the disease anyway... but Paul enabling these situations certainly didn't help things. 
There was a pivotal scene where Freddie tells his bandmates that he's sick. It was fabricated for the movie, not to mention he wasn't diagnosed until after Live AID... but again, it served the storyline in the movie. And his comment to them after his confession was true to real life- he didn't want sympathy or to be pitied. He just wanted to make music. Artists that don't let things like this define them are really admirable. The art always comes first and that's how it should be-- until staying alive becomes a full-time job.

Of course the titular song gets a lot of screen time in the movie. A couple of times, we see Rami Malek performing it. The first time is 16 minutes in, he's on his back and he's playing the opening chords blind on a piano above his head. That's amazing. And the painstaking task of working on it and getting everything right... wow... plus reading how they wore out the tape with all the overdubs to the point it was transparent... another cool tidbit was reading that Brian May showed up on set, unbeknownest to anyone, while the actor playing him was recording the guitar solo. 

I gotta say- all of the actors involved in the movie- they were really good. The actor playing Brian May was so good and he looked so much like him, it was scary. 
Then Mike Myers playing the head honcho at their record company that didn't believe in the song. First of all, the fact he played him, not getting the song when he was the reason it was introduced to my generation with "Wayne's World"... it's freaking hilarious.
Sadly, unless it's a classic rock station, the radio doesn't play anything that's more than three minutes anymore. It was an interesting experience to see the movie and how this song was rejected at first because it was too long for radio. Someone in the scene mentioned "Macarthur Park" being over 7 minutes. I know for a fact that "Stairway to Heaven" was 8 minutes long and it came out before "Bohemian" did... 

It's always fun to see how things that have become fixtures in pop culture and people's minds are rejected at first because they're misunderstood. They played the song on the radio in the movie and there were dozens of one-line reviews saying how terrible a song it was. All of those people, if they're still alive and seeing the movie now, they're probably kicking themselves. 
It's kinda like Harry Potter being rejected by dozens of publishers, but once it finally was, it became this huge phenomenon. 

Another cool touch was when Brian May had the idea to incorporate the audience into their songs when he realized they were singing the songs back to them. That's how "We Will Rock You" came into being. As important as it is for artists they know themselves and stick to their guns, it's also important for them to know their audience and make them a part of the show. After all, they're the ones we pay to see them and are why they have these successful careers. 
The only real downside about that-- when artists that have been around for 30+ years settle for playing concerts full of hits instead of pushing their current material. But it depends on the artist and your personal tastes.

Rami Malek really was good as Freddie. There wasn't a second of the movie where I didn't believe he was that person. Comparing the Live Aid performances side by side (yes, there is a YouTube video on this), he looked a lot like him, but Rami is a lot easier on the eyes. Then again, Freddie Mercury was gay, so I really shouldn't feel that attraction to begin with. But I'm sure if I had been around at the time and saw Queen live in some capacity, I'd be with the die-hard fans... he's one of the most charismastic live performers that ever lived and no imitation will ever be able to surpass that. 
My knowledge on Freddie Mercury was fairly limited. I did see a Behind the Music documentary on him on VH1 Classic, but that was at least 10 years ago and I didn't have a lot of memory of it. I know he's a major performer and had this amazing range. But I didn't know he had a 4 octave range or it was enabled by 4 extra incisors he was born with. I was astonished the most to find out he played piano. I thought he was just the lead singer and it didn't occur to me that he played anything. 
Also- his style of piano playing- it was something really unique and special. With Bohemian Rhapsody, he played the main part of it with his right hand and reached over to the higher keys with his left. Seeing the Live AID performances side by side, seeing Freddie actually do it in real life was mind-blowing. 
(Also didn't know he was bisexual- he's this big gay icon, it didn't occur to me that he'd have any female relationships. But supposedly he was really close with Mary Austin and they stayed close friends in real life. There was part of the Wikipedia article that talked about his sexuailty and how he kept his illness secret... he wanted to keep his private life private and I can absolutely respect that. But I can also see the other side where him confessing to having the disease would boost awareness of it. But it isn't as if coming forward about it would have changed the fact it was killing him)

Now onto the big Live AID performance at the end... 
it was absolutely epic... it was a great set list too. I was really surprised to find "Radio Ga-Ga" was part of it. We do have a Greatest Hits 3-disc set and I'd listened through it once or twice. But when I found Lady Gaga got her stage name from that song, I had to listen to it. It's a little strange and different, but I really liked it. Seeing that performance in the movie where the entire crowd was clapping together to it in unison... WOW... the fact everyone was into the performance all at the same time, that's a powerful thing. It was just like everyone on the dance floor at my school singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody all at once. Makes me feel like there are few other bands that can inspire more crowd participation in that way. And the fact that the Live AID performance was reconstructed almost done to the last eyelash-- seeing the YouTube video with them side by side, all of the gestures being reproduced by Rami Malek... he must have worked on that for weeks to get everything right. 

And it goes without saying... you get through the end, you're full of adrenaline... you have to watch the movie through to the end of the credits. You just have to. They had "Don't Stop Me Now" and "The Show Must Go On" as the final two songs. The first one has been done in so many commercials and I'm already so sick of it, but in the movie, I have to stick with it. And I don't often stick around through the movie credits- unless it's a Marvel movie and there's a scene at the end, or it's a music movie and you have to stay until the last song. "Purple Rain" was the first movie where I couldn't stop watching until the WB logo came on at the end. 
Plus, "The Show Must Go On"... it's absolutely epic and it gives me chills every time I hear it.