In honor of Steve McQueen’s upcoming Widows, his first feature since his Best Picture-winning 12 Years A Slave, it is time I’d write something a little more contemporary. It has been 10 years since he debuted his first full-length feature and, despite the power and brutality of his last two films, his first one, Hunger, is what struck me the hardest in terms of him as a visual filmmaker. The same goes for his lead actor, Michael Fassbinder, his editor, Joe Walker (Sicario, Arrival), and director of photography, Sean Bobbit (The Place Beyond The Pines, On Chesil Beach). What striking power we saw in his last two and we can expect in Widows all started 10 years ago and even beyond there.

Background

Hunger is set around the 1981 H-Block Maze Prison dirty protest, where members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) imprisoned began a no-wash protest, refusing to bathe and shave, wear no clothes rather than prison clothes, and smeared the entire cells with their own human waste. They demand to get back their status as a political prisoner which was revoked five years earlier and new UK Prime Minister, Margret Thatcher, took the hardline against the IRA. (“Crime is crime is crime, it is not political,” she said.) Bobby Sands, serving prison time for possession of firearms, was the commanding IRA officer in H-Block and decided to lead a hunger strike, willing to even die for his cause.

For the British and Irish, it is an event that is always remembered, mainly by those who were alive and haunted by images of the protest and reactions, as McQueen was. It made reverberations even in the US with the Irish-American population and murals of the protesters (spoiler alert: 10, including Sands, died; Thatcher responded by saying, “He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organization did not allow to many of its victims.”) It also started a push for the nationalist Sinn Fein party to rely on elections rather than have their paramilitary faction take over.

The Image Of A Shithole

McQueen came from a visual art background, mainly using still photography and avant-garde short films in his work. The techniques he utilized transferred over into his full movie making, keeping dialogue at a minimum, with the exception of the turning point in the second half where Sands decides to go on the fateful hunger strike. First, you see the extent of the resistance by the strikers and how harshly the guards and riot police go in to break it up. When a new prisoner enters his cell naked and with only a blanket to cover himself, he sees his cellmate already smearing the walls with his shit. Later, when everyone is taken out so the cells can be cleaned, one cleaner is bemused to see on the wall a rendition of a maze, making a symbolic path to how the prisoners need to escape but can’t find their way out.

The brutality of the guards is obvious. Nothing is said; they grab them one-by-one, hold them down in a tub while cleaning and shaving them. Later, McQueen goes 360 with his camera as the prisoners are beaten and probed grotesquely without cutting away. But the shots are not always making the guards vicious and barbarous in their sadist ways; one guard leaves and starts crying from the constant roughs of the job and another is seen at the very start exiting his home and looking under his car for a possible bomb, reinforcing the viewers of the paranoia the British faced by the IRA at the time this was happening. (The Troubles, as it was called, lasted from 1968 to 1998, ending with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.)

Philosophy Of Dying

The IRA was a predominately Catholic group fighting against the authoritarianism of a distrustful Protestant-based government. Murdering is not moral, but it is the only way they could make a statement in resisting the pressure by the British military. Killing one’s self is also not permitted, but when the backs are against the wall and one dares to challenge an authority like the new Prime Minister, the “Iron Lady,” as she was nicknamed, martyrdom by any means is the answer. The leads us to the most powerful, direct, and most talkative scene in the film. It is also one where nothing moves, yet it is the hardest scene a director could possibly film and challenges how long a take can be. With visual exposition comes Sands and a Catholic priest (played by Liam Cunningham) discussing, like a scene from an existential play, the value of human life.

It is 17 minutes long to be exact on a medium-shot of Sands and the priest talking at a table smoking cigarettes and building up to the most highly political moment in the film. It only breaks when Sands gives a fable of a story from his childhood to justify his decision to gamble his entire life for the sake of a free, united Ireland. The discussion of what life means is as strong as any of Robert Bresson’s fables, or the monologue by Michael Stuhlberg to his son in Call Me By Your Name, and even the deeply philosophical voiceovers said in The Thin Red Line. The pain Fassbinder has to physically show then courtesy of a 900 calorie diet he followed for months to get to same malnourished state as Sands in his last two months is explicit on the screen. Naked, weak, and covered with body sores, it becomes an excruciating reminder that this was a true story and that, as rough as political protests may get, this form is among the harshest in such a dismal chapter of The Troubles.

A Cinematic Portrait Of A Consequential History

This is McQueen’s masterful stroke of work of what he’s done so far and I can hope to see again this November with Widows. Moving from the biographically graphic to the suspenseful is quite the transition, but I suspect McQueen, based on the trailer has already invoked the dark, ominous tone that has been present from Hunger. It is more dialogue-based, but McQueen has not strayed away from the visually rich he prides himself in doing with long takes. Having seen Hunger at least half a dozen times, it is impossible not to notice how McQueen makes every inch of the frame his own canvas in coloring the bleakness of the cells and the violence that ripped thousands of citizens in the conflict. The pain feels real and the final shots, the final breaths of someone was willing to take, drive in Hunger and the meaning of it all.

Follow me on Twiiter: @BrianSusbielles (Cine-A-Man)

Just a bunch of musical prostitutes, my dear.

I realize that you’re currently reading a music-themed article on a movie site, but don’t drowse off just yet. As the token musician of InSession Film, writing about music as it relates to film is out of personal necessity, and with the release of Bohemian Rhapsody, a kind of magic has aligned. Call it an excuse if you must, but this grants me permission to give in under pressure and play the game of dissecting one of my favorite bands and their stone cold crazy career. How many (killer) Queen references were you able to decipher in that opening paragraph? Don’t judge, just let me entertain you.

Queen were innovators in genre and production, and they deliberately made that known; sometimes forcibly so, tagging each of their 1970’s albums with a “No Synthesizers” gag, queuing listeners in on what sounds and styles they were able to conjure with only piano, guitar, bass, and drums. Each of the band’s four members (who remained unchanged throughout their career) possessed a masterful and unique bond with their respective instrument; Brian May on guitar, Roger Taylor on drums, John Deacon on bass, and of course Freddie Mercury himself, perhaps the greatest front man and rock singer of all time. They are one of our greatest rock bands, but they didn’t start out that way, and similar to how we talk about audiences not being ready for certain films, Queen were certainly ahead of their time. Despite individual songs being written and credited by individual members of the band (some folks may not even know that Brian May and Roger Taylor were also talented lead vocalists in their own right), they only worked because of a special musical bond they shared with one other; they kept each other alive, for over 30 years.

As a massive Queen fan, a biopic like Bohemian Rhapsody is one I didn’t have much interest in seeing, and despite a few pleasing attributes (the music, Rami Malek’s portrayal, and the pathos behind 1985’s Live Aid performance) the film isn’t very good at all (part of me still dreams of the Sacha Baron Cohen cut). This will not be an in-depth review of the film, and will instead be an honoring of what that film sets out to achieve; a celebration of the great music of Queen, and a respect for their incredibly diverse and experimental career. Each one of their fifteen studio albums was its own journey with a mind of its own, many being better than others (yes, there are some duds). And as a music fan who considers the album as that artist’s singular musical statement, let’s take a look at all fifteen of Queen’s artistic statements from worst to first, from operas to races, from magic to miracles, even from immortal Scottish swordsman to Flash Gordon.

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15. Made in Heaven (1995)

I honestly considered not even including Made in Heaven, it feels unfair to rank among Queen’s studio output. It’s also quite terrible. Released four years after Mercury’s passing, Made in Heaven is comprised of Mercury’s unreleased vocal and piano parts with added instrumentation by surviving members May, Taylor, and Deacon, creating new compositions from those initial ideas. But without Freddie Mercury’s presence in each song’s finalization, the album simply comes off as passionless and reeking of financial obligation. Some of the best songs here (specifically the title track and “I Was Born to Love You”) already existed in prior form on Mercury’s 1985 solo album Mr. Bad Guy, only adding to the album’s overall lack of purpose. But aside from that, and aside from very good tracks like “Let Me Live” and “You Don’t Fool Me”, Made in Heaven feels overly schmaltzy, saccharine, and downright corny; I personally have a hard time just getting through a song like “Too Much Love Will Kill You”.

Listen to the full album here.

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14. Flash Gordon (1980)

This soundtrack and score composition (Queen’s first) of Mike Hodges cult sci-fi flick also feels a little unfair to rank. Flash Gordon is barely an album, if at all; it is primarily comprised of short interlude tracks and effects written for the film, even featuring some of the film’s actual audio and dialogue. This makes for a fine release within the context of the film, and the album can be enjoyed on those merits, but as an individual album it lacks musical fluidity; this may seem like unfair criticism, but I am ranking Queen’s “albums” after all. The opening single “Flash’s Theme” and closing track “The Hero” are the only two lyrical tracks, and are coincidentally the only two that feel like “songs”. They are great tunes for sure, and the soundtrack features many enjoyable interludes (“Football Fight” is a riot), but they aren’t enough to give this album its own functionality outside of the film. It’s a fine soundtrack, but not so much an album.

Listen to the full album here.

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13. Jazz (1978)

Some Queen fans may have this playful release ranked higher, especially for yielding some of the band’s most notable hits (“Fat Bottomed Girls”, “Bicycle Race”, and the quintessential “Don’t Stop Me Now”). But Jazz always felt too little too late, and a bit of a dull recreation of what the band had already done before. Reteaming with producer Roy Thomas Baker, who helped provide the technical marvels behind Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera, sounded good on paper, but ironically Jazz just sounds paper thin and musically weak. When it needs to rock out with songs like “Let Me Entertain You” and “Dead on Time”, it lacks energy, and when it needs to provide beauty and melancholy with songs like “Jealousy” and “In Only Seven Days”, it lacks pathos. And at a length of thirteen songs, which actually isn’t that dense by Queen’s standards, the album still feels too long. Many of these tracks, while perhaps stylistically regressive for Queen, are not bad in the slightest, but Jazz is sadly one of those albums where its production and overall sound fails it. It does, however, feature one of Queen’s most amusing openers with “Mustapha”, Freddie’s tribute to his own heritage.

Listen to the full album here.

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12. A Kind of Magic (1986)

Like Flash Gordon, A Kind of Magic too is a soundtrack album of sorts (for Russell Mulcahy’s fantasy epic Highlander). However, unlike Flash Gordon, A Kind of Magic feels more like an album, probably because it only partially serves as a movie soundtrack. Instead of instrumental interludes, A Kind of Magic is composed of nine lyrical songs, all of which range in musical diversity like the best Queen albums do. With such strong hit songs like opening rocker “One Vision” (initially for the movie Iron Eagle), the anthemic title track, and the achingly gorgeous and orchestral “Who Wants to Live Forever” (one of the band’s best), A Kind of Magic should have been more magical. But by functioning as only a “partial” soundtrack, the album feels incomplete, with the album’s remaining cuts functioning as mere filler to make up space, such as the uninspired repetition of “Pain Is So Close to Pleasure” and “Don’t Lose Your Head”. There are some epic movie-themed tracks here (“Princes of the Universe” and “Gimme the Prize (Kurgan’s Theme)” specifically), but sadly, and similarly to Flash Gordon, most of the album is best enjoyed in conjunction with its respective film, and not as well on its own.

Listen to the full album here.

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11. The Works (1984)

In many ways, The Works was Queen’s 1980’s “debut”, the album that would form the overall sound and style of Queen in the 80’s. Many fans also considered this album a return to form for Queen, having experimented with disco and R&B on 1982’s Hot Space two years prior, and while The Works still carries on with the more pop-flavored stylings Queen would explore throughout this decade, the album reemphasizes their rock-and-roll backbone, with Brian May’s signature guitar tone all over heavy tracks like “Hammer to Fall” and “Tear It Up”. The album is at its best when it sticks to this raw sound (mirrored in its colorless album cover), not just on those two aforementioned rockers but also on songs like “It’s a Hard Life”, “Keep Passing the Open Windows”, and the incredible closer “Is This the World We Created…?”. Aside from these great tracks, the overall album sounds a bit at war with itself stylistically, which is surprising given how musically diverse Queen were known to be. Perhaps it’s mostly due to synth-pop anthems like “Radio Ga Ga” and “I Want to Break Free” which (call me crazy) I don’t think have aged all that well, and only contribute to the album’s struggle for self-identity. The Works may be a mixed bag, but still not without its strengths.

Listen to the full album here.

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10. Hot Space (1982)

I realize that on any other Queen fan’s list, 1982’s Hot Space is bottom of the barrel (or at least damn near close); I happen to think it’s pretty good. What was it I said earlier about Queen? They were innovators in genre, looking at the musical past while also predicting its future. During this time, disco, funk, and R&B were still top of mind, but the way Queen married the dance genre’s typical synth sounds with authentic rock instrumentation was somewhat unique. Queen didn’t just make another disco album with Hot Space, they made a statement of how instrumentally diverse pop music can be, to the point that Michael Jackson even cited the album as a big influence on his 1982 classic Thriller (I bet you didn’t know that). Brian May’s tasteful guitar licks compliment the synth grooves of “Staying Power”, “Dancer”, the incredible “Back Chat”, and Taylor’s “Action This Day” beautifully, to the point that I wish there was more of it. It’s strange that Hot Space often gets criticized for being Queen’s “disco” album, when its disco-influenced songs are actually the album’s highlights (yes, I even like “Body Language”). Instead, the album’s back half offers more musical variety, sometimes for better and for worse; Deacon’s “Cool Cat” is a groovy reggae number featuring a stunning vocal performance by Freddie, but Taylor’s “Calling All Girls” and May’s respective contributions “Put Out the Fire” and “Las Palabras De Amor” sound excruciatingly out of place. However, Hot Space is perhaps most known for its closer, a collaboration with David Bowie on the classic “Under Pressure”; and rightfully so; this song soars.

Listen to the full album here.

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9. The Miracle (1989) 

From the beyond silly album cover, The Miracle is perhaps Queen’s most playful album of the 1980’s, and all the better for it. Still dabbling in their blend of synth-pop and heavy rock as heard on The Works and A Kind of Magic, the results on The Miracle sound more consistent and self-aware in its absurdity, as if the band had finally found a way to mesh these tonal extremes. It’s heard on the pop rock anthem “Breakthru” (one of my favorite Queen songs from the 80’s), the electronic romp of “The Invisible Man”, as well as the dual openers “Party” and “Khashoggi’s Ship”, but when the album rocks, especially on great anthems like “I Want It All” and the phenomenal closer “Was It All Worth It” (a reflection on the band’s career up until that point), things still feel of a piece and never too tonally jarring. Not every song nails that tonal balance though, as many of John Deacon’s co-contributions (specifically “Rain Must Fall” and “My Baby Does Me”) come very close to self-parody, but Brian May’s guitar playing has never been more tasteful during this era (just listen to “Scandal” to hear why), giving The Miracle more personality than its two 80’s predecessors.

Listen to the full album here.

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8. The Game (1980)

The opener “Play the Game” may be its own anthem of love, but so is the entirety of 1980’s The Game, where Queen paid loving homage to their influences (the greaser-themed cover should give that away, where Freddie bears a striking resemblance to Elvis Presley) while simultaneously embracing where pop music was going. On The Game, Queen opened up their minds, stared inside, and played the musical game, to the point that this became their first album to finally use a synthesizer (an Oberheim OB-X), musical commonplace at the time. The Game relishes in textures of power pop, rockabilly, and funk, yielding some of the bands most danceable hits; Deacon’s “Another One Bites the Dust”, Mercury’s country/rockabilly hit “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, and the heavy funk of May’s “Dragon Attack”, one of their greatest live staples (and a personal favorite of mine). The Game mostly succeeds in accomplishing a very tricky thing, nostalgically looking back to the musical past while never forgetting the future (Queen had always been foreshadowing where rock music was going, even if it wasn’t intentional). The album does, however, have a few moments where things sound more regressive and reactionary of the times, such as the power pop stylings of “Need Your Loving Tonight”, “Rock It (Prime Jive)”, and “Coming Soon”, all of which sound like they could’ve been hit songs by any new wave act only a few short years prior. But these few moments of near mimicry can be easily forgiven by the time we reach Brian May’s gorgeous closer “Save Me”, a Queen ballad for the books.

Listen to the full album here.

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7. News of the World (1977)

News of the World was seen as Queen’s response to the punk rock scene, after being criticized by bands like The Sex Pistols for being too “progressive”. But aside from the obvious punk rebuttal with Roger Taylor’s “Sheer Heart Attack” (and a successful one at that) News of the World is not a punk album. It is, however, Queen at their most stripped down, raw, and organic, substituting the symphonic for the anthemic. This becomes clear less than five seconds in, when the classic pairing of “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” comes right out swinging without any warning. But News of the World has more raw diversity up its sleeve than simply the two greatest sports anthems ever written, including John Deacon’s tender ballad “Spread Your Wings”, Brian May’s melodic rocker “It’s Late” (one of his greatest contributions), Roger Taylor’s funk metal masterpiece “Fight from the Inside” (perhaps my favorite Taylor song), all concluding with Mercury’s jazz crooner “My Melancholy Blues”. Despite its versatility, News of the World never loses its grit and stays rather unpolished, reigning as one of Queen’s most consistent albums. I’m singing a lot of praise here, and yet I can’t bring myself to rank News of the World any higher due to one simple reason; I can’t be the only person who thinks “Get Down, Make Love” is one of the worst songs of the 1970’s.

Listen to the full album here.

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6. A Night at the Opera (1975)

Queen fans may disown me for putting A Night at the Opera outside my top 5. With a title inspired by the Marx Brothers, A Night at the Opera is perhaps Queen’s best and most important album; an operatic, playful, and expensive journey in musical variety and studio trickery (at the time it was the most expensive album ever recorded). Mixing genres of heavy rock (the cynical opener “Death On Two Legs”), delicate pop (Deacon’s tribute to his wife “You’re My Best Friend”), bluesy rock (Taylor’s most popular tune “I’m In Love with My Car”), gorgeous balladry (Mercury’s dedication to Mary Austin “Love of My Life”, and a reoccurring theme in the biopic), folk music (May’s sci-fi themed “’39”), Dixieland jazz (“Good Company” – I mean, just listen to Brian May’s guitar mimic a clarinet!), and Music Hall (“Lazing On a Sunday Afternoon”), A Night at the Opera is musically all over the place but never feels like much of a mess due to the strength in its songwriting, a strength we can’t mention without acknowledging the greatness that is “Bohemian Rhapsody”, a six-minute summation of everything A Night at the Opera represents, and one of the greatest musical journeys of the 1970’s. But as someone who prefers the raw heaviness of Queen’s earlier works, the album sometimes sounds a little too polished, stripping away the grit of its heavier tunes. It also, on a few occasions, trips over its own ambitions; the middle vocal bit of “The Prophet’s Song” overstays its welcome, the Music Hall of “Seaside Rendezvous” veers dangerously close to self-parody, and May’s rocker “Sweet Lady” is dully out of place. It’s not a perfect album, but it gets props for perhaps being the most theatrical rock album ever made, and a great starter for newcomers of the band.

Listen to the full album here.

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5. A Day at the Races (1976)

#Underrated. With A Night at the Opera being such a critical and commercial hit, it would’ve been easy for Queen to simply recreate that album all over again. Sadly, A Day at the Races often gets criticized for being just that, a sequel of sorts to its predecessor. One must question, if it wasn’t for yet another Marx Brothers-themed title, would critics have still said this? A Day at the Races clearly rides on A Night at the Opera’s more Vaudevillian successes with less musical variety, but what it lacks in diversity it makes up for in consistency; the album is more loving, tender, and consistently amusing, almost conceptually so, an experience reminiscent of watching a complete Music Hall performance from the Victorian era. And with Queen producing the album themselves this time (without Roy Thomas Baker), the album sounds less polished than A Night at the Opera and more live and organic, complementary of that live Victorian setting. It’s clear from the great opening rocker “Tie Your Mother Down” that Queen are intending to have some fun here, which continues with the Vaudeville stylings of “The Millionaire Waltz” (perhaps a bit of a “Bohemian Rhapsody” retread), and “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy”, though their tender side still shines through on Deacon’s lovely “You and I”, Mercury’s aching ballad “You Take My Breath Away”, and especially the gospel stylings of the classic “Somebody to Love”. A Day at the Races yields some of the best vocal harmonies by the band (I imagine this being a favorite album among choir teachers), and it all sounds refreshing baroque.

Listen to the full album here.

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4. Queen (1973)

Queen may have formed in 1970 (after Mercury joined May and Taylor following their own band Smile), but it took three years to release their debut. And to be honest, their self-titled debut is a bit of a patchwork and clearly represents a group of young men still trying to figure themselves out (even the band admits falling victim to over-arranging). But listening to this debut with the mindset that it was released in 1973 reveals a whole new perspective; Queen were always praised for being ahead of their time, especially in production and musical variety, but we often don’t acknowledge the influence they had on heavy metal, and that started here. May’s anthemic opener “Keep Yourself Alive” was like nothing the world had heard before, with an energy and aggression that rivaled other metal pioneers at the time (i.e. Black Sabbath and Deep Purple), but layered with a guitar tone that was just incomparable (Brian May, who studied astrophysics, built his own guitar, dubbing it the “Red Special”). It doesn’t end there; “Son and Daughter” is among the heaviest in the band’s catalog, and Mercury’s contributions “Great King Rat”, “My Fairy King”, and “Liar” epically channel the psychedelia and theatrics of early progressive rock/metal. The overall sound of Queen is dirty and unpolished (some songs even sound like demos, such as the dark ballad “The Night Comes Down”), but this grit continues to attract hardcore fans, myself included. It was also the first album I ever heard on vinyl; call me sentimental.

Listen to the full album here.

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3. Innuendo (1991)

In-nu-en-do (noun) – an oblique allusion, hint, or insinuation. Perhaps this album title meant little to critics and fans back in February 1991, but nine months after the release of Queen’s final album, the allusion became clearer. Freddie Mercury was a very private and prideful man, and when he died that November of pneumonia due to complications with AIDS, Innuendo slowly took on a new meaning. Much like David Bowie’s devastating final album Blackstar, Innuendo is an insinuation of one’s upcoming death, and refusing to give in to the reaper’s reaching hand. Even though you can hear the slow deterioration in Freddie’s voice, he continues to passionately belt “Yes we’ll keep on trying, tread that fine line” on the album’s complex title track, singing of remembrance for better days on “These Are the Days of Our Lives”, even finding the time to laugh at his illness on “I’m Going Slightly Mad” (accompanied by a quirky music video which was reportedly almost too physically exhausting for Mercury to shoot), all concluding with a plea for a never-ending legacy on “The Show Must Go On” (“Inside my heart is breaking, my makeup may be flaking, but my smile still stays on.”). Freddie’s plea for pushing forward continues on great cuts like “Ride the Wild Wind”, the saddening “Don’t Try So Hard”, the aggressive rocker “Headlong”, and even wishing well to one of his cats with the silly “Delilah”. Innuendo is one of the rock music’s saddest albums, which is perhaps why it has stylistically aged better than its 80’s predecessors, straying further from synth-pop and tonally closer toward post-punk, new wave, and alternative rock (i.e. The Cure). Bring tissues.

Listen to the full album here.

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2. Queen II (1974)

Having already shown the world an edge like no other, Queen’s debut still retained their early Smile roots, particularly on early Smile songs like “Doing All Right”. The band still needed to discover a more defined sense of self, which became the basis of Queen II, a dual-sided conceptual epic filled with fairy fellers, seven seas, queens, and ogres. Rather than the typical Side A and Side B vinyl format, Queen II is split between Side White and Side Black; Brian May (with the help of Roger Taylor on one song) handled the writing of White, Mercury handled Black. With the epic opener “Father to Son”, the delicate “White Queen (As It Began)”, and the soft-spoken “Some Day One Day”, Side White continues where Queen left off, and with strong results. However, it is Mercury’s Side Black that has become synonymous with Queen II’s continued legacy, a medley of epic fantasy that foreshadowed the early experimentations of Queen. Side Black rises from the ashes with the heavy onslaught of “Ogre Battle” before transitioning into the medieval weirdness of “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke” (inspired by Richard Dadd’s painting of the same name). This connects effortlessly into the brief beauty of “Nevermore” and the epic centerpiece “The March of the Black Queen”, one of the band’s greatest deep cuts. Closer “Seven Seas of Rhye” (only half written for their debut) became the album’s only “hit” single, but fittingly concludes this unified epic through medieval times that flows freely as a single piece of music. The album’s legacy continues to grow, becoming a cult favorite among fans and even Queen themselves, a legacy clearly scene on its iconic album cover, later recycled for the music video to “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

Listen to the full album here.

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1. Sheer Heart Attack (1974)

“Guaranteed to blow your mind, anytime.” They killed it alright. A Night at the Opera may have been when people took notice of the band, but Sheer Heart Attack is when Queen became Queen, and marks one of the greatest and most significant leaps forward for any band (and the album was released only seven months after Queen II!). Sheer Heart Attack is a seamless marriage of what Queen was and who they would become, a bridge between their glam/metal beginnings and their heavily polished musical versatility; they had conquered the recording process by now (with the help of Roy Thomas Baker), crafting a tight, diverse, and complexly arranged string of thirteen songs where not one sounds like the other (it might as well have been thirteen albums). The album delivers on glam rock (“Brighton Rock” and “Now I’m Here”), art pop (the killer classic “Killer Queen”), ragtime (“Bring Back That Leroy Brown”), opera (“In the Lap of the Gods”), speed metal (“Stone Cold Crazy” – later covered by Metallica without much difference), all ending with a literal explosion on “In the Lap of the Gods…Revisited”. And despite its diversity, the album never trips over its ambitions (unlike elements of A Night at the Opera); the songs are mostly short, to the point, and transition into one another like a 39-minute medley (which includes the clearly defined yet incredible three-part medley “Tenement Funster” – “Flick of the Wrist” – “Lily of the Valley”). The album’s title should have been an indicator that its sheer variety might be enough to put someone into cardiac arrest, but never has such an eclectic rock album sounded this graceful and complete, with sounds that no one would expect a four-piece could create. This, dear friends, is Queen.

Listen to the full album here.

A fact about me: I have a Masters in Political Science, yet I now regret even going into that cesspool of red tape, democratic authoritarianism, pettiness, greed, power lust, gaslighting, ratfucking, cockblocking, and every other derogatory word you can describe politics as. My interest in politics in the era of Clinton/Bush-Blair relationship, the global outlook from the rise of Merkel’s Germany, Chavez’s Venezuela, Kirshner’s Argentina, Lula’s Brazil, Berlusconi’s Italy, Chirac-Sarkozy’s France, Putin’s Russia, and the history of their predecessors was a more intriguing, sane, and understanding time in the late 2000s and early 2010s. My love for movies was a hobby and understanding the political background of some films made it easier for me to enjoy while also learn a bit more about a certain country. Thanks to House of Cards, The Thick of It, Boss, and Veep, it was a good time to watch the flair of politics dramatized for a time.

Now, I hate it. I enjoyed my six years in college and wish I was there still, but now I have cut myself off virtually from the political realm because it’s headaches, heartaches, and mental breakdowns for me. But it hasn’t turned off my liking for political films, dramatized not documented, because the genre has been around since the silent film era. The Life Story of David Lloyd George, co-starring Alfred Hitchock’s future wife, Alma Reville, was made in 1918 while the title character was still Prime Minister. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and Young Mr. Lincoln were two brilliant films about heroes against the system, both released in 1939 with its leading stars, James Stewart and Henry Fonda, being a real-life Republican and Democrat respectively and even being close friends in real life. Going abroad, dictators used fiction to depict democracy as a source of past struggles while raising their own profile.

When the Second World War ended, a more direct message of a regime’s systematic abuse was more openly produced in all languages. Here a few of those globally recognized assaults against injustice on the people.

Hands Over The City (1963)

Italian director Francesco Rosi, who also made the neo-realist Salvatore Giuliano, brought on American star Rod Steiger to play a corrupt Naples councilman who uses his power to profit from a real estate deal and is connected to the collapse of a residential building. Naples councilmen, led by a communist, go on the charge to seek the truth that is too thick to pull out. Even though he knows he will never get to the bottom of it, the viewers see how corrupt a city can truly be based on how much money is involved and connections with the Mafia. Except for Steiger, the others were actual real-life members of the Naples city council, who had to act for Rosi a scene where they all say they are not corrupt.

The Battle of Algiers (1966)

There are so much power and so much versatility in this film which is why it is in my Top 10 Criterion films. Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo shot on location in the newly independent state of Algeria and re-creates the bloody conflict in the 1950s between Algerian nationalists and the French military who seek to shut the revolt down in order to keep their wealthy territory across the Mediterranean. On one side, guerilla fighters will shoot officers at any given moment and bomb popular places. The other, the military resorts to all forms of torture to get intel. The cinéma vérité filmmaking within the streets and in the Casbah, combined with documentary-like editing and Ennio Morricone’s socio-military soundtrack, is an eyeopening experience that was still sensitive to everyone because of the horrific bloodshed but carries on fifty years later.

Z (1969)

Costa-Garvas struck deep in protesting his native Greece under a military government at that time (it was produced in Algeria) with a thinly fictionalized portrayal about the assassination of a popular left-wing politician by far-right extremists who are connected to police officers and army officials. With Yves Montand as the fallen politician and Jean-Louis Trintignant as the magistrate seeking the truth, it is a thriller that is loose and fast (its editor, Francoise Bonnot, won an Oscar for her work; she recently died) and gives the personal reality seen around the world at the time of witnessing a hero fall in thanks to fears of others, as it was with Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. one year before in the US. Z refers to the ancient Greek verb zei, or “he lives,” defiantly saying the legacy of the murdered politician will never go away, which was the case when Greece returned to democracy in 1974.

Tout Va Bien (1972)

“Everything is fine,” in translation, Godard, a Marxist who took his cinema to a radical level at this point, brought in Yves Montand and Jane Fonda, both noted leftists, as a French husband and his American reporter wife who cover a strike at a factory. A critique of marriage, capitalism, and French society after 1968, Godard uses very long takes and breaking the fourth wall in monologues of both the factory worker and the manager who explain themselves, as well as the craft of the camera going across the cross-sectioned building and passing through walls into every room. While the global revolution had died down a bit, the mood was still present in France. As Godard stated, “The problem is not to make political films but to make films politically.”

General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait (1975)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=762VIy1gZW0

Here’s a documentary, up close and personal, of the psychopathic dictator of Uganda who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds and thousands of people in his rule from 1971 to 1979. Barbet Schroder (Reversal of Fortune) and cameraman Nestor Almendros (DP of Days of Heaven) got access to interview the man who once said he idolized Hitler and showed off his “invasion” of Israel when that day came. He’s a buffoon that, at best, was lovable and playful, but, at worst, had no qualms of executing anybody. In fact, when Amin asked Schroder to cut some scenes and Schroder refused, Amin held 200 French hostages in Uganda and Schroder complied. They were put back in after Amin’s fall, but what was seen off-screen and on could not have given a more clear picture of a murderous egomaniac.

These directors went on to make more great political films. Garvas responded with The Confession, State of Siege, and his Oscar-winning Missing. Rosi would follow up with The Mattei Affair and Lucky Luciano. Pontecorvo had Kapo and Ogro, Godard remained around the experimental and social realist with Film Socialisme in 2010, and Schroder made the political documentary Terror’s Advocate. Others have also struck hard across the world with provocative works about the political class and reflecting on a country’s rough history. They tread dangerous waters and know the opposing side will cry foul, but this is what the political genre is about: truth-telling, idea sharing, and reflection on the status of the world.

Follow me on Twitter: @BrianSusbielles (Cine-A-Man)