Bohemian Rhapsody: The mistaken message
A couple days ago, the Oscar 2019 nominations came out. Many films were no surprise, as they genuinely deserved the nominations they received. However, I couldn't help, but notice that a film that received particularly received negative reviews for its nominations, was Bohemian Rhapsody. I read up a review on this, and the person who wrote the article seemed to hate Bohemian Rhapsody for the same reason that many people did, by missing the point all together. One of the particular complaints for the film was the lack of revelation and diving into Freddie Mercury's bisexuality and sexual explorations. It was a topic that has been addressed by Brian May and Roger Taylor, the guitar player and drummer for Queen, respectively, and producers for the movie. They wanted the focus to be on Freddie Mercury, and all the musical accomplishments that he did. And that was what I received from the film. I have loved Queen, and its music since I was a young child, and I didn't need to know about the sexual life of Mercury. Another issue that was addressed was the lack of exploring the death of Mercury by an AIDs induced disease. Apparently the actor who played him, Rami Malek, agreed on that matter (If you want to see the article I have been referring to, I will provide the link below). However, I believed that the movie went enough into the details of him learning about having the disease, as well as explaining his eventual death in 1991. There are also other factors that contributed to this particular bash, such as "straight washing" and new accusations against Singer, but I wanted to focus on the message of the movie itself. It was a relatively simple movie, with not too much extraordinary about it, but it gave me the nostalgia and brought back something I have always loved; the music of Queen. And I personally believe that it deserved the nomination that it received, although arguably there were more movies also deserved the Best Picture nomination along with it.
Before seeing the movie, I heard a lot of negative reviews of how it straight-washed him and how it didn't explore his journey with AIDS enough, but I LOVED the movie. I thought they did an AMAZING job. He wasn't even diagnosed until 2 years after the Live Aid event so it is actually considerate that they added in his diagnosis to the movie. Albeit, I was annoyed by the one line where Mary (I think that's her name) tells him he is gay when he says he is bisexual but again the movie overall was fantastic.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree, the movie served its purpose, and I think the hate on it has been completely unreasonable.
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