QUEEN GIVES ONE LAST PERFORMANCE IN VIRTUAL REALTY
Posted November 2nd, 2018 at 3:55 pmNo Comments Yet
IN REVIEW
PRODUCERS DELIGHT QUEEN FANS WITH MINI CONCERT
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
B
ohemian Rhapsody (2018) is a great musical tribute to Queen and the lead singer, Freddie Mercury.
The movie theatre audience really liked the film with many obvious Queen fans in attendance hoping for an intimate portrait of Freddie Mercury.
Director Bryan Singer uses a wrap around and a prolonged opening scene sequence that teases theatre goers who want their first look at Rami Malek transformed into the world’s most endearing rock and roll lead singer.
The film shows how the band formed, made music and reached the height of success at Wembley Stadium in London, England, for the Live Aid 1985 benefit concert for famine stricken Ethiopia.
Singer uses interesting camera work, such as panning forward through staging.
BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (2018)
Singer is known for producing and directing several of the X-Men franchise films, including X-Men (2000). Singer also directed Tom Cruise in the biopic Valkyrie (2008), about a WWII plot by the military generals to assassinate the country’s leader.
The Usual Suspects (1995) was Singer’s first major critically acclaimed success before the superhero themed movies. The crime drama, starring Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin and Benicio Del Toro, gathered a bit of a cult following for a few years.
Del Toro went on to become one of Hollywood’s most sought after Latino actors after starring in such major hits as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) co-starring Johnny Depp, and Traffic (2000) co-starring Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Del Toro went on to play Cuban Revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara in Che (2008). Recently, director Rian Johnson cast Del Toro as the Code Breaker in the Disney blockbuster, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), starring Daisy Ridley.
Singer brought a lot of skill and experience to the Queen biopic, but he seemed to struggle a bit with a hybrid musical-feature film genre not tried and tested in the movie industry that much.
Singer does create some compelling suspense with close ups of inanimate objects as if shooting still life photography with the movie camera.
Overall, the film contains sufficient realism with actual concert footage of Freddie Mercury used only at the end of the film during the credits, while several scenes involving concerts were dramatized with Rami Malek performing as Freddie Mercury.
The script did include a few too many concert scenes for a film narrative, but Queen fans will be happy to participate in what almost amounts to a mini rock concert with fans laughing and clapping as if hanging on Freddie Mercury’s every word.
Singer follows two sub plots about Mercury’s personal struggles in parallel to the main narrative about the band’s music. Mercury first struggles in leaving the patriarchal Persian family structure and then in finding his sexuality once he becomes an international celebrity.
The film has a sideshow narrative about the lead singer’s cats who grow in numbers over the years as a replacement for family and friends from whom he finds himself alienated.
Mercury spent a lot of time working alone and working with the band, recording records and touring to promote the records, at the expense of his personal life.
The film lightly touches on the naughty underside of the music industry and treats a lot of the bad controlling stuff with humour.
The film producers took eight years from concept stage to theatres with many changing faces, including a change of director during filming.
Casting is believable and so believable that Malek becomes Mercury at times.
The film can be a bit too sentimental in moments, but if that is how the lead singer was, then the fans appreciated seeing that intimate side of him.
For Queen fans, Bohemian Rhapsody is probably a really good film. For film fans, Bohemian Rhapsody is a good film.
The acting is good, but the actors don’t go through a range of emotions by any one actor when a lot of the subject matter is kept light hearted and humour inspiring.
Time fraud is a real problem in filmmaking, and this biopic is no exception.
Some biopics focus on one relationship or one day in the life or one important event rather than try to span the life of the subject in 134 minutes.
Bohemian Rhapsody tries to show a little bit of everything to explain the life of Queen, and the flow of the narrative suffers as a result.
Singer does touch on some dark secrets such as corporate control of talent and the racial bigotry present at the time, as well as more subtly treating homophobia, and the bias news coverage that resulted.
Singer had to deal with the egos of the actors, as well as the superego of the rock stars, with Queen band members, guitarist Brian May, and drummer, Roger Taylor, hired on as advisors to the film production teams.
Queen was one of the most successful rock and roll bands of the last fifty years, appearing in front of massive arena audiences in excess of 100,000 ticket holders.
Freddie Mercury was considered one of the best front men in the industry who rivaled Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and Roger Daltrey of the Who as the greatest.
Mercury wrote 10 of the 17 tracks on Queen’s Greatest Hits (2006) album. The album quickly sold more copies than the Beatles’ album, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).