Freddie Mercury or as he was born, Farrokh Bulsara, was in my opinion one of the best song writers and vocalists of all time. The movie Bohemian Rhapsody, starring Rami Malek, shines a new and  interesting light into the life of the British singer.

(SPOILERS from here on)

The movie can be split into three distinct parts that are kind of stereotypical, as in this is just kind of how every rock star movie goes.

The first part is where Freddie is a nobody in London, and how he meets the band, and why he can sing so well, and just basic setup. It then moves into him falling in love with Mary, but it becomes clear that he is curious about his sexuality. The breakup that they have seems to fall flat though. Mary, who is played by Lucy Boynton, calls him out. She knows that he is gay. He doesn’t seem to have any real emotion behind it. This is a common theme throughout the film, and maybe this is how Mercury acted but it just seems cold. I would have liked for there to be the element of emotion to further deepen the plot.

The band goes on tour and are making the climb to fame and I liked how in the first part, it shows the guys all together bonding, like a family. They are going through similar things and it is going well for all of them. They would argue and fight, but when someone had an idea they always came back to the music.

Then Freddie is also building his stage presence which is portrayed really well. Malek depicts Freddie’s ability to show how he commanded the crowd and the stage. His presence seemed real and it made made me wish I could go to one of Queen’s concerts. From the beginning of the movie on it’s really shown how he always had this ability to preform live in an amazing way. 

One of my favorite parts of the movie is when they are recording their first album and how they were trying to make it different and how they used the recording studio in a completely new way. They were putting change on drums and swinging amps across the room and the whole thing was really interesting to see.

The second part of the film moves into how lonely Freddie is now that the rest of the band has wives and families. He takes a solo deal and he basically breaks up the band. The transition to this is done very well because it really shows how his loneliness is affecting him. The rest of this part is just him drifting further and further away from who he is and Mary and the band. It’s sad to watch, but you can feel the disconnect between him and the rest of the world. He meets Paul and starts to have a very dysfunctional relationship.

Then comes the end of the second part when he coughs up blood, because most of us already knew how Freddie’s story came to an end. When Mary visits, it is such a relief when he finally kicks Paul out pf his life and calls the band.

He goes to the doctor and is diagnosed with AIDS, which was not surprising but still heart-wrenching. When he tells the band he says he only wants to focus on music and he doesn’t want to become the AIDS poster boy, or cautionary tale. I think that is shown throughout the move – he doesn’t seem to want to focus on it or cry, he just wants to keep being who he was meant to be.

When he is diagnosed, a fan recognizes him and the movement is shown beautifully – it was so sad and so full circle and a perfect depiction of how far he’s come.

The last 20 minutes are all dedicated to a show and it was the perfect wrap up. It made me want to listen to Queen the whole way home, which I did, and brings back the timelessness of the music.

So overall this was a very good movie but some of the emotions just weren’t very developed, but that’s all I could really expect as Freddie wasn’t known for being a very outwardly emotional man, just a wonderful song writer, a friend, and an amazing vocalist.

That love of this movie and of the music is also seen through the fact that Bohemian Rhapsody, which came out in 1975, is back on the Hot 100, at number 33. It also has an impressive 13.3 million streams.