Queen biopic celebrates music legend’s life

Music legends, Queen, have impacted many through their music. This past weekend the movie, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which documented their frontman Freddie Mercury’s life was released in theaters.

When many think of Queen, they think of the large mouthed lead singer, Mercury (Rami Malek). However, there were three other members of the band that helped contribute to Queen’s greatness. Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) played the drums, Brian May (Gwilym Lee) was the guitarist and John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello) played the bass.

Although the movie is mainly about Mercury, the other three members are not ignored. In fact, their bickering and push back against Mercury is what truly made Queen, Queen.

The director, Bryan Singer, truly gathered the essence of the group, or I should say family. 

This theme of the band being a family is evident throughout the entire movie. Even in times where it seemed that they could never be together as a group without ripping each other apart, they always came back together in the end.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” also shows the dark side of fame. 

Although still taboo at the time, Mercury was gay. The media saw this as a thing to know more about and overwhelmed him and the other band members with questions only about his sexuality.

This caused him to spiral, finding solace in drugs, alcohol and many sexual partners.

Unfortunately, this was the same time the AIDS epidemic was happening, which Mercury contracted. 

However, Mercury never wanted that to be his legacy. He wanted to be remembered, not for being the poster child of AIDS. He wanted to be remembered as he truly was. “When I’m dead, I want to be remembered as a musician of some worth and substance,” he said.

It’s safe to say that their music is still impacting people today. 

When I was 13, I discovered Queen. I memorized all of the lyrics to the song “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and I found comfort in their music.

Seeing such an iconic band on the big screen performing concerts was somewhat strange to me. I realized as I watched that I would never get to experience Queen in their fullness as so many of that time had.

All because a legend was taken too soon.

I believe that the music produced by Queen will continue to stand the test of time and will be helped even more by this artistic masterpiece of a movie.