So anyway I saw Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) yesterday and I liked it a lot. It made me emotional, I was mouthing along to the songs, Rami malek is fucking wonderful. Queens a big BIG thing in my family and so I know that there were some historical inaccuracies but honestly? It was a fun, inspiring portrayal of an amazing man. Its well shot, the actors are great. Maybe the dialogue gets clunky but it’s still good.
And then I see that it’s only got 50 odd percent on Rotten Tomatoes which, whatever, critics suck. THEN I read a review to see what everyone’s mad about and let me tell you I am fuming.
I read an economist article that worried that stopping other biopic in 1985 “might prevent an excellent performance from being a prize-winning one, of the sort that earned Oscars for Tom Hanks in “Philadelphia” (1993) and Matthew McConaughey in “Dallas Buyers Club” (2013).”
What. The. fuck. One of my favourite things about this film is that it didn’t show the horrible, pain-porn, graceful and yet horrific decline into aids that every other film about queer men in the 80’s milks out. The LGBT community knows about the aids crisis. Everyone knows that Freddie died of AIDS related illnesses. I’m so fucking sick of gay tragedies.
I loved this film because instead of being a glorification of his death it was a celebration of his life. You want to know when Freddie Mercury informed the public he had AIDS? The day before he died. He didn’t want to be a poster boy, a spectacle. He was a person outside of his illness.
Queer people don’t exist to die peacefully on your screen, leaving you with a hopeful majestic quote about how really everything’s going to be a alright. Growing up gay I truly thought I wouldn’t be able to be happy. Why? Because in every portrayal of a queer character they either died horribly or died alone.
So yes. I like this film. I like having a film about a queer person that focused on their life instead of their death
