'Is this the real life?' How biopic 'Bohemian Rhapsody' tells it all

In 2018, the biopic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was released. This movie tells the story about Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the famous British rock band Queen. Besides getting an inside look of Mercury’s personal life during the glory years of the band, the viewer also gets to see the development of the band from a group of students performing in bars to being one of the most successful bands in the history of music.

Biopics are biographical movies that dramatize the life of a non-fictional character. By adding elements of dramatization, the line between fiction and fact is being blurred. In ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, several facts represented do not correspond to the actual band’s or lead singer’s career details, or some features in the movie arecompletely fictional. The way in which some elements in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ are dramatized, or the way in which some facts about the band or the lead singer have been left out in the movie, have been criticized by many, especially when it comes to several themes that were relatively new and of great importance during the seventies and eighties in which the story takes place. According to some critics, the ‘serious’ themes have been pushed to the background or otherwise been romanticized, and the ‘less serious’ themes have been made of great importance and otherwise been dramatized. In this article, the following research question will be answered: How does the movie ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ come about as a biopic? This will be done by, among other things, elaborating on the criticism about the dramatization and the leaving out some of the most important themes.

How it all began

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ tells us the story of Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the well known British rock band Queen. The story starts with the band’s lead singer working as a baggage handler at Heathrow Airport, whilst living with his parents and his sister. When deciding to visit a concert of a local college band at a pub, he meets the band’s drummer, Roger Taylor, and guitarist, Brian May, who informs Freddie that their lead singer/bass guitarist had just quit the band. Freddie, who has been following the band for a while, volunteers to be their new lead singer and immediately impresses the other band members with his vocal ability. Taylor and May decide to let him in the band, and start selling out gigs across Britain. During the period of time when the band starts to get more and more famous, Freddie meets a woman called Mary Austin. He falls in love with her, and eventually asks her to marry him. Whilst being on tour, however, Freddie starts an affair with the band’s manager, and thus finding out his homosexuality. Mary breaks up with him, and he continues his relationship with the band’s manager for a short period of time. Also, with the worldwide outbreak of aids, Freddie discovers he has been infected with the virus. When he confesses to the band about his infection, they still continue their touring and start rehearsing for one of the biggest live concerts: Live Aid.
 

The movie ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ can be seen as a biopic. A biopic is a biographical movie that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional person or people. With such films, the central character’s real name and the most historically important years of their lives are depicted. These two characteristics of a biopic can be seen very clearly in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’: all the original names of the band members are used and, as a viewer, you get to see Freddie Mercury’s and the band’s most historically important years of their lives.

How the biopic displays Freddie Mercury

According to Bingham (2010), the biopic is a dynamic and important genre. It narrates and celebrates the life of a person in order to demonstrate, investigate or question his or her importance in the world, to illuminate the fine points of a personality. The self that is represented and produced by the film is a dynamic and ongoing performance.

The appeal of a biopic lies in seeing an actual person who did something interesting in life, known mostly in public, transform into a character. 

Private behaviors, actions and public events are formed together and interpreted dramatically as they might have been in the person’s time. In ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, some of the fine points of Freddie Mercury’s personality in combination with his interaction with the band have been show (or attempted to, just how one interprets the movie). One of the characteristics of his personality being depicted in the movie, is Freddie’s flamboyant stage personality, which is in contrast with how shy he was when not performing. During the movie, the viewer gets to see in what kind of extravagant manner he performs: he teases and charms his audience, taking it further than the rest with various extravagant versions of himself. When the viewer gets to see him after he performs, he is much calmer and not giving much of himself away. Other examples of characteristics of Freddie’s personality which are being displayed clearly in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, are his love for cats (Stein 2018) and his ‘love’ for partying in combination with drugs and alcohol. The movie displays this ‘love’ in several scenes: for example his extravagant house party when celebrating his birthday.
 

During the glorious years of Queen, Freddie Mercury developed into an important, worldwide known persona. This characteristic of a biopic, an actual person who did something interesting in life transforming into a character, is being displayed from one of the first scenes of the movie on to the rest of the scenes. One of the first scenes of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ shows the viewer how Freddie lived before his career in Queen: he worked as a baggage handler at Heathrow Airport. Whilst working there, he lived with his parents and sister with whom he fled from Zanzibar to Middlesex, England.

The fact that he developed his career from a baggage handler to one of the biggest rock stars known worldwide, as a refugee, shows that he developed himself from an ‘actual person’ to a real character.

This character, in which he has transformed, characterizes the fact that he has become one of the many refugees and immigrants who contribute far more to modern British cultural importance than anybody. However, as an objective viewer, you do not get to experience what other themes and characteristics come with Freddie Mercury as a character. According to critics, Freddie as a persona or character displayed and was known for much more than his extravagant manner of performing and his astonishing career than what is displayed in the biopic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

'On stage' or 'too staged?'

In biopics, making a story means selecting from someone’s life. Huge periods of time need to be shown in the movie or are not even referenced at all: there is no room to delve in every album, tour, or other details in Freddie Mercury’s career. With this, it can be hard for directors or producers to avoid playing a little fast and loose with the facts of Freddie Mercury’s life for dramatic purposes, or simply just to safe time in the movie. Mostly the dramatic purposes are displayed clearly in the biopic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. According to Waites (2015), the blurring of fiction and fact highlight the degree to which the self identity is ‘staged’. According to critics, some aspects of Freddie Mercury’s life are way too staged and dramatized compared to more serious parts of his life. One of the examples that stands out in the dramatization ofhis identity in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, is his relationship with Mary Austin. In the movie, the viewer gets to see many intimate moments between Freddie and Mary. However, even when he confesses his homosexuality to Mary, the movie still continues to portray the love Freddie has for Mary. He longs for her to keep wearing her wedding ring which he gave to her, he is jealous of Mary’s boyfriend and he begs her to come live with him again, while in real life, Freddie was sleeping with men while he was with Mary. Freddie’s homosexuality is thus being underplayed in the movie, while sexuality was, during that time, and still remains, a complex but important subject. During Freddie’s ascendance, liberalization of laws around homosexuality in the UK had not conquered homophobia. Besides, Freddie’s parents were strict Zoroastrian, a faith in which homosexuality is strictly prohibited. None of these complicated sides are being displayed in the movie, which, according to critics, strips Freddie of a part of his identity that was as vital to his success as his four-octave vocal range. Adding fiction to truth has thus had a big influence on the identity being staged in the movie: Freddie was one of the greatest homosexual icons in history, while this part of his identity is being underplayed in the movie.

Since a biopic is a biographical movie about a non-fictional person, the movie must depict elements of reality. These elements of reality can be depicted by using reality effects. According to Barthes (1968), ‘reality’ in film is not a cause but an effect, a strategy. One of the most important ‘reality effects’ of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, is the way in which actor Rami Malek displays the narrative of Freddie Mercury.

According to critics, Malek has done an impressive job recreating Freddie’s moves on stage, but more importantly his intensely thoughtful and insight-rich channeling of Freddie’s hurt, alienation and isolation even at the height of his fame.

Playing the role of a non-fictional person in a biopic can be difficult since there is a pressure for accuracy. The pressure the cast and crew feel do not only come from audience expectation and comparison to reality; taking on the role of a real person is demanding because actors want to do justice to the person they are portraying. When portraying such a person, the actor is automatically portraying the person’s ‘narrative’: each of us constructs and lives a ‘narrative’, this narrative is us, our identities. According to Strawson (2004), human beings typically see or live or experience their lives as narratives. In ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Rami Malek thus ‘lives’ and displays the narrative of Freddie Mercury.

Fact and fiction

It can be stated that the fictional elements in the biopic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ have had some effects on the factual storyline of Freddie Mercury’s life. Critics were disappointed by the movie’s ‘rose-tinted’ storytelling that ultimately glossed over the nuance in Freddie’s story. The more ‘complicated’ aspects of his life, such as his homosexuality and his infection with aids, were underplayed , while other ‘less complicated’ aspects were somehow emphasized, like his relationship with Mary Austin. It was even stated by some critics that ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ did not ‘get’ Freddy Mercury acting out his shameless and iconic eccentricity, and thus did not ‘get’ its own subject. Homosexuality was and remains a complex issue: so many of the problems the film has in depicting Freddie’s story are widespread and the film is a sign of the way society continues to view homosexuality. Besides the fictional aspects added to Freddie’s life and personality, several other fictional aspects have been added to the story of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ when it comes to the band as a whole, like the accuracy of the band’s historical timeline, the way Queen ‘clashed’ with their manager, and how the song ‘We Will Rock You’ came about, just to name a few.

Sometimes, nowadays, it seems nearly impossible to make a ‘good’ biopic without receiving  too much criticism. This is because today’s critics expect some semblance of authenticity: this is especially true if it’s a film based on a public figure with a well documented history. The digital age we live in nowadays, where information is readily available and free in any place with a Wi-Fi connection, has made it virtually impossible to tell a life story and not be questioned on its validity. However, one of the most important characteristics of a biopic is the dramatization of the non-fictional person’s life. So it is quite ‘natural’ when a biopic such as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ plays a little fast and loose with the facts of the non-fictional person’s life. But at the expense of the extraordinariness and the celebration of the life of an icon such as Freddie Mercury? Never. Otherwise, one should make or watch a documentary, which contains hardly any fiction.

References:

Barthes, Roland. (1986) “The Reality Effect”. The Rustle of Language. Berkeley: Trans. Richard Howard. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Bingham, Dennis. (2010). Whose Lives Are They Anyway? New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Chiu, David. (2018, October 30). Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ movie fact verus fiction: how events and people in movie differ from what really happened. Ultimate Classic Rock. 

Romano, Aja. (2019, January 6). Bohemian Rhapsody loves Freddie Mercury’s voice. It fears its homosexuality. Vox.

Stein Ellin. (2018, October 26). What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Bohemian Rhapsody, Slate.

Strawson, Galen. (2004) Against Narrativity. Ratio 17.4, 428-52. 

Waites, Kate J. (2015). Sarah Polley’s Documemoir Stories We Tell: The Refracted Subject. Biography 38.4, 543-55. https://doi.org/10.1353/bio.2016.0004