piercing the sky

Rating: 7/10 (3 December 2018)

I am a daring person and I confess what very few people seem to have the courage to confess nowadays. I never was a great fan of 'Queen' or Freddie Mercury. It may be my dislike for the disco genre and the suspicion that this rock band with incontestable talent and which has reached immense planetary success, slid too much towards this direction. It may be the fact that by the time when 'Queen' were rising and had reached the peak of their glory I was behind the Iron Curtain with all what that meant from a point of view of censorship. Anyway, it's a fact, but at least this gave me the advantage of seeing and judging 'Bohemian Rhapsody' without the prejudice or extra-enthusiasm that many of the fans seem to have in the opinions they expressed about the movie.
Not being too updated about the biography of Mercury and the history of the group, most of the information brought to screen by the film was new to me. As I understand there are some inaccuracies but the spirit of the band was kept true by the two veteran members of 'Queen' who are still active and who read the script and surveyed the filming. They seem to have had such an influence on the film that director Bryan Singer did not complete his work, although he is still the only one credited, and the differences of opinion with them led to Sacha Baron Cohen giving up acting in the lead role. We are left with a story of the raise, the troubles and the tragic end of a star who aimed to pierce the skies with his music, but the same ambition as well and his incapacity to control his personal life daemons led to his burning out fast after reaching the peak. The film deals mainly with the period of his ascend and culminates with what is considered today to have been the best concert Freddie Mercury and 'Queen' ever gave and one of the best in the history of pop music - their section in the Live AID concert on Wembley, on July 13, 1985.
What I liked: The rendition of the atmosphere and sound of the music clubs and recording studios of the 70s is very credible, close to a documentary, and I mean the positive interpretation of the term. The stories about how some of the most famous songs of the band came to life are very interesting, and I do not care too much if they are not 100% a accurate. The recreation of the band concert at the AID Life mega-show on Wembley is a masterpiece. All details are being brought to screen at perfection and the atmosphere is as electric as it was on the stadium. I have seen again the original footage on youTube, and the twenty-something minutes in the film seemed to be another version of the same event, filmed with different cameras. The soundtrack is also excellent.
What I liked less: I feel that Rami Malek is a miscast. He is doing great efforts to replicate the moves, the grimaces, the moods of the real Freddy Mercury but he lacks the charisma and the stage presence of the artist. The teeth prosthesis is ridiculous. All this is mixed into the melodramatic construction of the script and the effect is at some moment closer to parody than to real emotion.
Frankly, I believe that the producers missed a great opportunity by not succeeding to bring Sacha Baron Cohen in the cast. It would certainly have been a different film, as Cohen is known for insisting on his personal ideas in executing his roles. I am not sure that my opinion about 'Queen' and Freddy Mercury would have changed, maybe the film would have been less reverential to the factual history of the band, but certainly it could have been a more interesting movie.