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The movie doesn’t deny his sexuality, but it also doesn’t explore the nuances of Mercury’s life or art as a queer man. But it ultimately sells a moralistic, sanitized version of his life and music, rendered “respectable” for mainstream audiences - both because of what the film emphasizes and what it leaves out. The film that will premiere on November 2 after 10-plus years in production limbo, Bohemian Rhapsody, isn’t necessarily a straight-washing of Mercury’s private life, nor does it shy away from his drug use. His death from AIDS complications in 1991, when the illness still carried a scandalous connotation of gay male promiscuity, made him one of those celebrities, like Rock Hudson or Liberace, whose image became in some ways defined by queer tragedy. But we now know that his last major romantic relationship was with a man, and he was open with those in his inner circle about his relationships with men. Mercury, the band’s frontman, never came out to the general public or labeled himself in an interview. Then, after the release of the promotional trailer for the film earlier this year, emphasizing Mercury’s relationship with a girlfriend, Mary Austin, critics immediately accused the film of straight-washing. The film’s original director, Bryan Singer, was fired in the midst of the production in December last year and replaced by Dexter Fletcher, though Singer retained sole directing credit.

Sacha Baron Cohen, who became attached to play Mercury in an earlier version of the project in 2010, dropped out by 2013 because he felt the film would fail to depict the “nitty gritty” underside of Mercury’s life, like his drug parties. When the news broke that a biopic about Freddie Mercury and the British rock band Queen was in the works, some critics expressed concern about how Mercury would be represented. And in some ways, the subgenre of movies about famous queer figures who were never out during their careers can more easily circumvent the cookie-cutter biopic problem, because the very fact of depicting their star’s sexuality gives them a headline-making angle. But they work best when they are able to move beyond the conventional wisdom about an artist or public figure, finding a previously unexplored slice of their life that illuminates something new about them. Celebrity biopics are, almost by definition, formulaic narratives depicting some combination of rise, fall, and redemption.

Download the new version for apple Bohemian Rhapsody