How do you make a movie about a band whose entire reputation was built on being uncommercial? The indie rock band might have sold out with some product placement deals at the height of their ’90s fame, but they never signed to a major label, eschewed press and public performances, and were never afraid of making creative decisions that could alienate fans and new listeners alike. So how does one make their Bohemian Rhapsody?
Alex Ross Perry’s film picks up with the band on the eve of their 2022 reunion tour, a momentous event marked not only by the series of live shows but also the launch of a jukebox-style musical and an exhibit of memorabilia: handwritten lyrics, old ads, and even the clothes they wore at the infamous 1995 Lollapalooza festival, still caked in the mud the audience threw at them. They also reflect upon the process of making their earlier biographic film Range Life that dramatized their rise to fame, starring Joe Keery and Jason Schwartzman. Except Range Life isn’t real. The behind-the-scenes footage and sequences from the film were filmed by Perry for this film. In fact, Perry wants you to wonder if any of what you see here is real.
“I thought it was supposed to be fake, but it’s all real,” one band member muses while wandering the surreal museum exhibit of the band’s history. The statement reflects the intent of the film as beneath the playful and often beautifully realised satire of the ever-present modern musical biopic, is a well considered exploration of the nature of, and limitations of, filmmaking and mythmaking. In one memorable sequence, Keery attempts to capture the mannerisms and affectations of the bands frontman Stephen Malkmas through a series of obtuse methods that include photographing the leading man’s tongue. He later finds himself unable to shrug his weary attitude and ironic brogue, an amusing subversion of the familiar method actor myth. But here an actor is playing an actor struggling with the demands of a fictional role for a movie within a movie; layers of fiction colliding.
The comic melancholia of the band undercuts the self-importance of music biopics. One of the more complete sequences we are offered from Range Life sees Keery as Malkmas, offered a career-launching turn on Saturday Night Live by his giddy agents. Lying on his bed, phone tucked in shoulder, he drearily tells them that he doesn’t really want to do the gig. Portentously dramatizing underwhelming moments whilst fabricating “all-is-lost” moments that are proven to have not actually happened by contrasting the re-enactments with real footage serves to remind the audience of just how generic the recent (and ongoing) spate of films about musicians have become and the disservice this need to conform every musical act’s story to the same narrative structure does to the bands and their art.
None of which is to say that you won’t learn about the band pavement as you watch. The rags to riches narrative may be subverted here, but the story of the bands rise to fame and subsequent difficulties and frustrations emerge through the playful tricks and mischief that speak far more authentically to the bands spirit and raison d’être than any dry recounting of their founding myth could. The film works as an earnest study, particularly of frontman Stephen Malkmus and his difficulties with his own fame and legacy. This does also mean that in its final act the film verges into the sentimental and deeply conventional triumphant final montage. But with such wit and formal experimentation along the way, it’s hard to feel that the film hasn’t earned its extended victory lap.
Four Stars