bohemian rhapsody: freddie mercury, gay superhero

Rami Malek does an amazing job of portraying Freddie Mercury in the Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody. The film takes a pretty typical showbiz road-to-success route, with more than a few inaccuracies. But even with its faults, it serves up a great deal of wonderful rock music, supported by Malek's sensitive portrayal of Freddie. Some viewers may feel that the depiction of Mercury's sexuality is handled too subtly, but I think that is missing the larger impact of the film, which is still performing in the top five at the box office in the U.S. and is currently the highest-grossing musical biographical film of all time. Everyone has always loved, and still loves, Freddie, no matter who he loved.

Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury in concert

So many movies that hit it big at the box office these days are comic-derived fantasies, like the X-Men franchise, also directed by Bohemian Rhapsody's Bryan Singer. It occurred to me after viewing the film that Freddie and Queen's story may be resonating with audiences because it is cast as a similar misfit hero's journey. Teenage Freddie Mercury (born in Zanzibar as Farrokh Bulsara, an Indian-British Parsi) moved to England in 1964. He is an outsider, a misfit, ridiculed for his large overbite and called "Paki." But Farrokh has a secret identity as a musician (as well as secret urges he is trying to come to terms with). He changes his name to Freddie Mercury and displays his superpower — amazing musical talent, stage presence, and the four-octave range of an angel. Freddie bonds with fellow outcasts, and the quartet calls itself Queen and becomes a force to be reckoned with. They take over the world, but have to confront their share of villains, including Freddie's lover-manager Paul Prenter (Allen Leech) and a clueless record exec (Mike Myers).

There were many negative critiques of the film on its release, particularly about the handling of Mercury's sexuality, but that hasn't stopped audiences from finding and adoring the film. That may be partly because the power of the professional reviewer has waned — thanks to the internet anyone can review and rate anything these days. But the film's huge success may also reflect the modern audience's reaction to Freddie's sex and love life. Sexuality is viewed in a more fluid and open sense these days. In a key moment in the film Freddie confesses to his girlfriend and fiancée Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton) that he thinks he is bisexual, and she corrects him, "No, Freddie, you're gay." This interchange straddles the past and the present. People who lived through the AIDs epidemic and lost friends, lovers, and family may relate to Mary's needing Freddie to be true to himself and come out in an open way. Younger viewers may be seeing Freddie's lack of desire to define himself sexually as something they can relate to, and his subsequent AIDs diagnosis as a piece of history from the recent past. Bohemian Rhapsody's Freddie spends the film coming to terms with his sexuality, as it relates to his family, his religious and ethnic background, his status as a rock god, and his quest to balance sex and love.

Mary Austin: What do you want from me, Freddie?
Freddie Mercury: Almost everything.

Freddie Mercury portrayed by Malek is flamboyant, outrageous, and larger-than-life — onstage. He seems happiest, most at home when he is performing before an audience. Queen's music spanned genres as diverse as arena rock, 50's doo-wop, and opera, and Freddie's exuberant vocals and stage persona are a match for any and every musical style. As I watched Malek recreate Mercury's signature posturing it became apparent that rock and roll lead singers, gay or straight, present themselves similarly as strutting sexual objects of desire.

Bohemian Rhapsody bookends its story with practically a shot-for-shot recreation of Queen's epic performance at Live Aid in 1985. To amp up the drama the film plays fast and loose with the facts, having Freddie receive his AIDs diagnosis right before the concert. In reality he was diagnosed with HIV in late 1986 or 1987. It also portrays Freddie's having a solo career as leading to the band's fracture, but Queen never broke up, and all the band members pursued solo projects at different times over the years. While the film does portray Freddie's long-term relationships with Mary Austin (who he is quoted as saying he considered her his common-law wife), as well as his partner at the end of his life, Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker), it skips any other lasting relationships he may have had, apart from the aforementioned Paul Prenter, who is portrayed as a predatory user who was trying to control Freddie's career and  limit his contact with the outside world by plying him with drugs and other distractions. Prenter, like Freddie, died in 1991. The film does depict Freddie's relationships that probably no one will argue with: his great and abundant love of cats, of which he had many over the years.

It's probably not possible to have a "true" film biography of anyone as iconic as Freddie Mercury. For all of his onstage campiness and theatrics he was also notoriously private in his home life. The surviving members of Queen — Brian May (Gwilym Lee), Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy), and John Deacon (Joe Mazzello) had been open to and involved in making a film about the band for ages. First in 2010, it was cast with Sacha Baron Cohen in the lead, who left the project. He was succeeded by actor Ben Whishaw, and director Dexter Fletcher, who both came and went. In 2017 Rami Malek stepped in to play the central role of Queen's lead singer Freddie Mercury, and Bryan Singer replaced Fletcher. During filming Singer left the project under a cloud (he was fired for "unexplained absences"), but he is still credited as director. Dexter Fletcher returned to finish directing the film after Singer left, and received an executive producer credit. Lots of changes, but also pretty typical for a Hollywood film.

I have wanted to see Bohemian Rhapsody since viewing trailers a year or so ago. It did not disappoint me or my fourteen year-old daughter, who had lots of questions afterward, about the 80s and AIDs as well as wanting to download every Queen song ASAP, and wanting to watch the original footage of the band's appearance at Live Aid. It's impossible not to walk away from the movie without marveling at the band's versatility and uniqueness and Freddie's amazing talent. Bohemian Rhapsody is uplifting and heartbreaking as it charts Freddie's course. Malek has appeared in many interviews detailing his preparation for the role, which included a movement coach and mastering some very impressive false teeth. But as marvelous as he is at portraying Freddie onstage, what leaves the biggest impression are his quiet moments, as he grapples with his needs and never-ending loneliness when he isn't onstage:

Jim Hutton: So all your friends have left you alone.
Freddie Mercury: They’re not my friends, not really. They’re distractions.
Jim Hutton: From what?
Freddie Mercury: The in-between moments I suppose. I find me intolerable. All of the darkness you thought you’d left behind comes creeping back in.

madness, illness, grief, and the haunting of hill house

Beware of mild spoilers ...

I recently finished watching The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. But it is still with me. It was at times an uncomfortable watch, but it also may be one of the best things I've seen in a long time. It can't really be called an adaptation of the immortal Shirley Jackson novel. That classic book could be considered more of a jumping-off point for this, an original, deeply-felt horror story.

The original novel, first published in 1959, concerns a group of disparate people who have come together to study a house with a bad, even evil reputation: the organizer of a paranormal study, Dr. Montague; Luke, a descendant of the original owners of the house; Theodora, who seems to have run out of fun things to do and is there on a lark or a dare; and the fragile Eleanor, who is ready for something, anything, to happen in her life. The house's only two caretakers, a cook and her husband, adamantly refuse to stay in the house after dark — if only the quartet paid closer attention to that fact ...

Jackson's prose is poetic, and helps to weave a spell around the characters and the reader as they follow Eleanor through the halls of Hill House.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

The mini-series uses many of the same character names but makes them a family — a family held together, but also blown apart, by grief and madness. Interesting moments in the book are given a new twist on film.

Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, "She wants her cup of stars."

Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course. 

"Her little cup," the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. "It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk." The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, "You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?" 

Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.

No Human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.

Carla Gugino is amazing as Olivia

Timothy Hutton as Hugh Crain: family together, yet apart

The best horror is based on real-life fears. Slasher and vampire movies are tied to sex. Zombies and ghost stories to death. But The Haunting of Hill House mini-series takes a scary-enough-on-its-own ghost story and ups the ante by becoming a meditation on madness, illness, and grief.

Art provides one of the best outlets for grief and loss. When my father died in 1993 I was drawn to Sting's 1991 album, The Soul Cages, where many of the songs touched on what he had experienced after his own father died. Comedy movies that we had shared together while he was alive, like 1991's What About Bob, were also a balm. My mother died two and a half years ago and I am still struggling to come to terms with what that means and what it is like to live in a world with such a vast void — the invisible wall between life and death that my parents represented is now gone forever.

My mother had dementia, so it was a slow, heartbreaking decline to at first care for, and then helplessly witness. As I watched The Haunting of Hill House I recognized so many of my own feelings on display by the Crain family siblings — fear, grief, guilt, even loathing, of family members' conditions — possible madness, drug addiction, suicide. In this version Hugh and Olivia Crain (Henry Thomas and Carla Gugino) move their young family of seven into the dilapidated Hill House on the early 90s — with hopes to refurbish and flip it and make their own family fortune. But Hill House seems to already be inhabited — by ghosts — who menace the family — especially its youngest and most vulnerable inhabitants, the twins Luke and Nell. The story flashes forward to the present, and the estranged adult siblings and their father (Timothy Hutton) who are haunted by that summer and what happened there.

The Haunting of Hill House plays with truth and belief. If you look closely, there are things that live in the shadows — or are there? Are we watching the fractured break-down or haunting of Olivia? There are hints that her madness was already there — the way she doesn't seem to notice or react to her children being terrorized — but how one reads that behavior can depend on one's own perspective or reading of the story. Like a Choose You Own Adventure book, I think the filmmakers have left interpretation open-ended for the viewer. Shirley Jackson treated Eleanor in a similar fashion. Did she see what she thought she saw?

Shirley Jackson's book was also brilliantly and faithfully adapted in 1963 as The Haunting, starring Julie Harris as Eleanor

For me The Haunting of Hill House is a powerful meditation on illness and grief. And hope. Olivia's illness and death may have splintered, even destroyed her family for a time. But when they go back to revisit Hill House and the events that led to her death they are also able to close that chapter of their lives and move on. There is light to be found in the shadows of grief. There is life after someone's death.

All quotes from The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson, 1959.


This post also appears on Cannonball Read 10

coast guard dad

Lower Right, posing with his Coast Guard shipmates during WWII

happy veterans day

Today I remember and honor my dad and his service in the Coast Guard during WWII. 

Today is the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, which marks the anniversary of the end of World War I, which was formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. 

I also remember that today was my parents' wedding anniversary. 

Here are some screen captures of them from an old 8mm film that was taken during their honeymoon in Nassau. 

❤️❤️❤️

xoxoxo e

c'mon america!

🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 

🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 🌊 

favorite movie #95 - election edition: the candidate

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #95 - The Candidate (1972) - Robert Redford plays idealistic Bill McKay, who is pulled into a race by Peter Boyle  — as he gets deeper and deeper into the campaign he finds his ideals compromised and the end goal more confusing.

favorite movie #94 - election edition: shampoo

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #94 - Shampoo (1975) - Although not primarily about an election, the 1968 election of Richard Nixon as president starts the film, and the characters change partners to the backdrop of politics: Hairdresser George (Warren Beatty) escorts Jackie (Julie Christie) and Jill (Goldie Hawn)to a Republican election night party. The film is set at the beginning of Nixon's presidency, but the audience knows that Watergate and the disillusionment that scandal had on the office of president is in its characters' future. Shampoo is not just a great film, but a glimpse into the American public and personal politics of the Seventies.

favorite movie #93 - election edition: napoleon dynamite

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #93 - Napoleon Dynamite (2004) - The pace of this movie is as socially awkward and original as its title character, Napoleon Dynamite, played by Jon Heder. But once you get into it, you can't help but root for the strange Napoleon and his buddy Pedro, Deb, Grandma, and even Napoleon's annoying brother Kip.

favorite movie #92 - election edition: election

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #92 - Election (1999) - Reese Witherspoon is amazing as Tracy Flick, the indefatigable, unscrupulous, ever-achieving senior who is running for student body president. Matthew Broderick is her teacher Jim McAllister, who loathes her. This dark comedy never tries to make any of its characters likable and is all the better for it.

recap: all of my favorite halloween movie picks

Don't forget to say your "white rabbits x3" for good luck this month, and honor your saints today if that is your thing. Here is the list of all my favorite Halloween flicks this year, last month. Just because Halloween is over, that doesn't mean you can't watch a scary movie. They're always in season.

Castle of Blood, The Return of Dracula, Poltergeist, Trilogy of Terror, Rosemary’s Baby, The Innocents, The Stepford Wives, Eye of the Devil, What We Do in the Shadows, The Legacy, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 73-70’s T.V. Movies, Mad Monster Party?, The Omen, Village of the Damned, The Bone Collector, Beetlejuice, City of the Dead/Horror Hotel, Little Shop of Horrors, Horrors of the Black Museum, The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Birds, Bunny Lake is Missing, Spirits of the Dead, The Company of Wolves, The Shining, Wolf, Suspiria, Eyes Without A Face, Only Lovers Left Alive.