'Bohemian Rhapsody' has a problem with Freddie Mercury

I was brought up with Queen. Mum and Dad had the Greatest Hits music video collection on VHS, and we wore the hell out of that tape. We’d all watch it all together and both of them would have trivia tidbits and interesting facts about the band or specific music videos or memories that Mum and Dad had involving Queen. I remember feeling excited watching It’s A Kind Of Magic, transported during I Want To Break Free and increasingly somber during the later videos, especially I’m Going Slightly Mad. Having this exposure and love of Queen’s music introduced important conversations into our family from a young age like sexuality, HIV, and AIDS. Queen helped shape my upbringing and therefore, my identity.

Freddie died a year before I was born so I was never fortunate enough to see the greatest performer in the world live. When I heard of 'Bohemian Rhapsody', an upcoming biopic about Queen and Freddie Mercury, I was pretty excited. However, the excitement faded pretty quickly when I realised that the film would be a pathetic watered-down version of a story where the truth would have been far more interesting.

There are only two positives about this film. Rami Malek’s performance and the fact that it contains Queen’s back catalogue. Bohemian Rhapsody is a bad movie. The editing is whiplash-inducing and the dialogue is lame. (Does anyone really think Queen stood in a room together and cried in unison “we want to include all genres and be transcendent!”?) The major plot points either aren't in the right order or are just downright untrue, like Freddie’s HIV diagnosis being the primary motivation behind playing Live Aid. But the key reason why this film is so bad is its incessant need to avoid telling the story of Freddie Mercury.

The movie attempts to keep Freddie centre stage but strips away one of the driving forces behind his identity – his sexuality. In the film, things started going a little pear-shaped for the band when Freddie starts sleeping with men, and especially when he gets involved with Paul Prenter. It lauds his bandmates as being “on the straight and narrow” with their wives and heterosexual lives, with them even saying “this isn’t our scene, Freddie”. They’re uncomfortable and it’s all a little too “gay” for them.

The film seems to be mainly interested in expressing the story of his ex-girlfriend and platonic best friend, Mary Austin. I’m not taking away from the fact that Mercury and Austin had a profound connection that should be acknowledged in this kind of movie. But Freddie is only shown in one sex scene and that is with Mary. All moments of romance and tenderness are reserved for their interactions. It feels like the movie wants you to walk out of the cinema thinking, “oh if only he’d have stuck with Mary.”

As we never see Freddie’s expression of himself, his love of men, and his eroticism, the audience is ultimately left to deduce that it was Freddie’s queerness that killed him. A film that is focused on depicting the life of one of the most famous queer men on the planet avoids looking in detail about a huge aspect of his personal identity. Instead of looking at Freddie’s rich and complex life as a human being in the 1970s, Bohemian Rhapsody chooses to focus on Freddie the rock star, and his long-term platonic relationship. It’s not a mistake or misstep to leave out this enormous part of his identity, it’s deliberate erasure.