Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender Blu-ray Movie Review

The King of Queen.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 24, 2012

There’s a killer biopic waiting to made about Freddie Mercury. Born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar, Mercury went to proper British boarding prep schools but knew he never really fit in with the Ruling Class. Though he initially thought he would pursue a career in art, once he became more aware of how much he enjoyed making music, he set his sights on a music career and never looked back. One of the paradigmatic artists of the hedonistic eighties, Mercury also became one of the first faces of celebrity AIDS related deaths. Somewhat masked behind the legend is an obviously vulnerable but tough soul who covered any latent insecurities in a rather convincing show of bravado, a tendency which frequently alienated him from his Queen bandmates, as Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender makes all too clear. Mercury was also his own worst enemy a lot of the time, not heeding advice about either his career or especially his personal life, a proclivity which at least helped lead to his early demise. Mercury’s flamboyant stage persona and apparent bisexuality weren't seen as overly sensational when Queen first broke through into mainstream consciousness, and in fact were regarded as nothing more than "camp", but by the time Mercury passed in 1991, he was appropriately recognized as a trailblazer, albeit a controversial one, a man who had forged a clear path of personal expression that all sorts of artists have been able to emulate in his rather formidable wake. Never shy about self aggrandizement, Mercury not only agreed that he was a legend, he did everything in his power to foment tales of that legend himself. That makes Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender an absolutely fascinating exposé of a man who managed to change music and the public perception toward cultural outliers almost despite himself.

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender is filled to the brim with archival interview footage that reveals its subject to be a spectacularly awkward individual, one prone to snarky comments which are almost always immediately followed by a kind of “Oh, I was only kidding” follow up. Mercury comes across as a social malcontent, a man not particularly at ease within his own skin and genetically incapable of small talk, the fodder of many interviews. (Mercury is on record in this piece as saying he can’t stand interviews because he doesn’t like talking to people he doesn’t know very well, something else which no doubt adds to the awkward feeling.)

This is a fascinating documentary which perhaps reveals more about Mercury than Mercury would have ever felt comfortable revealing about himself. It’s obvious that Mercury deeply alienated his Queen cohorts, at least for a while, and he also befuddled music industry professionals as well as critics (and we all know how preternaturally befuddled critics are) when he opted to collaborate with Spanish diva Montserrat Caballé after he had begun exploring a solo career. In fact the largest swath of this documentary deals with his relationship with Caballé, a collaboration which really wasn’t deeply appreciated at the time but which now in hindsight seems to be the harbinger of all sorts of pop-classical crossover attempts.

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender is kind of surprising in its review of the British reaction to this decidedly odd man. In his early career, Mercury was just seen as just another eccentric rock star. He wasn’t particularly covert about his gay activities, but he also wasn’t shy about stating, as he does in one interview included in this documentary, about wanting children if he found “the right woman”. In fact, one of the most riveting aspects of Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender is the now largely forgotten brouhaha that arose when Mercury revealed he was dying of AIDS a mere 24 hours before he actually did perish. The press went a little nuts, lambasting the star for his decadent lifestyle and basically saying he deserved what he got. Only the efforts of his bandmates, who had achieved a rapprochement with Mercury, countered this attitude.

There's some passing information given to Mercury's personal life, including his contentious decision to hire a peronal assistant that the other members of Queen couldn't stand, a man who they allege sabotaged one of Queen's final tours by refusing to let Mercury participate in any radio interviews. There is also some touching commentary from Mercury's life partner who, like the members of Queen themselves, seemed to be in intentional denial about the star's health issues toward the end of his life.

As with many who are ahead of their time, Mercury’s impact has perhaps been greatest since the singer’s death. Looking back now on Mercury’s incredible use of overdubbing and layered synthesizer background accompaniments, it’s hard to underestimate the effect Mercury’s approach has had on subsequent pop stars. He was outrageous, of course, but what comes through so clearly in this documentary is how absolutely fragile Mercury was, albeit at a level hidden within a very resolute shell. In a world of cookie cutter rock stars, Mercury was a true original. He may have been pretending, as he himself alludes to in this documentary, but he had the great good fortune to be absolutely convincing in his pretense.

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1 and 1.33:1. Most of the archival interview and performance footage is in 1.33:1, and while the main interview segment that is utilized throughout the documentary (see screencap 1) is in remarkably good shape, some of the other footage, like the Live Aid concert, is pretty ragged looking, at least by comparison. Contemporary interview segments look quite good, with excellent clarity, contrast and fine object detail. Some of the concert footage with Montserrat Caballé has some slight contrast issues, perhaps because it appears that at least some of it was shot outside in less than ideal weather conditions.

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender features an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mix that offers the many talking heads segments as well as the copious musical segments with excellent fidelity, if sometimes frustrating narrowness. Mercury's multilayered approach was so hyperbolic that a surround mix certainly would have been preferable for the musical moments at least, but this stereo track does present everything with clarity and precision. There really aren't any uninterrupted musical segments anyway, as the bulk of this documentary consists of snippets of Mercury interviews and contemporary interview segments featuring those who worked with or knew Mercury, and those all sound just fine.

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Freddie Mercury Goes Solo (HD; 7:21) features an April 1985 interview with Mercury discussing his first solo album which was then being called "Made in Heaven". Other parts of this same interview are featured in the main documentary.


• Extended Interview with Montserrat Caballé (HD; 6:51) has the iconic singer talking about how she came to work with Freddie Mercury. Her heavily accented English is a bit hard to understand, but there are optional subtitles available.


• Making Barcelona: Special Edition 2012 (HD; 4:44) follows Stuart Morley in his attempt to reorchestrate the original album, replacing Mercury's multilayered keyboards and synthesizers with real instruments.

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender is one of the most interesting music star documentaries to come down the pike in quite a while, and not just because Mercury was such a flamboyant personality. In fact what comes across the most clearly in this piece is how uneasy Mercury was about himself, hence his love of "The Great Pretender" as one of the rare cover tunes he wanted to attempt. But Mercury was nothing if not complex, and that unease is just buried at times under what he himself describes as what is perceived to be arrogance, even if it's an arrogance born as a defense mechanism. Filled with fantastic archival interviews and performance footage, Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender might have done better to have spent at least a little more time on Mercury's hedonistic lifestyle and how that dovetailed into the general zeitgeist of the eighties, and some may wonder why so much time is spent on his collaboration with Montserrat Caballé, but otherwise this is a riveting piece that any Queen or Mercury fan should find extremely compelling. Recommended.