Sophia Allen
Lantern Staff
Bohemian Rhapsody begins with showing Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) preparing for Queen’s performance at the 1985 Live Aid charity concert. It then flashes back to 15 years prior. In London, a younger Freddie spends the evening listening to music in a pub after working the day at Heathrow Airport.
At the end of the evening, he speaks to the members of the band, Brian May (Gwilym Lee) and Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) and learns that their singer had just quit. Soon, he has joined the band along with John Deacon, a bass player (Joseph Mazzello), and they are having their first show together. During their set, Freddie rips the microphone from its base, creating an iconic look that would stay with him forever.
Several months later, the band, now named Queen, has a contract, a manager and an album. They continue gaining popularity and touring in a wider variety of places, shown in an exciting montage. After their tour is done, the band goes to a secluded farm to work on their next album.
At first, the conflict presents itself as the process of creating new music when the band all has different ideas. Each member strives to create bigger and better music, but they all have different ideas of what that is. During this time, they record the iconic song, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
The process of creating this song is shown to be hard work, but the band has fun with it, and when recording some of the vocals, they are shown laughing and joking around. They are shown later putting random objects (coins, beer cans, trash bins) on and around the instruments to create a new, unique sound.
The music biopic also profiles many important moments and people in Mercury’s life such as Mary Austin, (Lucy Boynton) who he often referred to as his common law wife and his only friend.
Mary would remain important in his life and an emotional conversation with her would lead Freddie to move back to England, reunite with the other band members, and, as shown in the first scene of the film, perform at Live Aid in 1985.
Though many critics did not like this film, the public loved it. This is in part by the universal familiarity with Queen’s music, and in part by the way Malek brought the personality of Freddie Mercury back to life. Malek did an incredible job reincarnating Mercury’s presence, both during speaking scenes and during performances. 10/10
