The movie has been an enormous success worldwide with fans and will soon pass an incredible $ 700million at the box office. Many critics, though, felt it avoided the harder truths of Freddie’s ‘debauched’ life and gave a rose-tinted and weak version of his incredible but complicated life. Malek, himself, disagrees and talks about the choices made about what was shown. Everybody knows that Freddie discovered and explored his sexuality throughout his life. Everybody knows how he died. Malek talks about his pride in the “intimate” moments that were shown.
Malek told Film 4: “There’s a guy who’s questioning his sexual identity. There’s a confused kid in there, a very complicated kid – and inside him is a tempest, volatile, about to explode…
“We wanted to be as intimate as we could with his life, showing an aspect of who this person was behind closed doors.
“How a young man from humble beginnings could become one of the greatest rock stars the world has ever know. And part of one of the greatest rock bands the world has ever known.”
The movie does actually show Freddie’s troubled early gay relationships and his growing distance from the band as he experimented with drink, drugs and threw lavish parties in London, before leaving for his notorious sojourn in Berlin. But did it show enough?
Malek said; “There’s, of course, a gratuitous, illicit, hedonistic side to this film you could go down, but you want to hint at that so you can live in the joy of what this band means to so many people.
“When you hear Queen there is a smile on your face whatever the song is… So why not celebrate the band who made that song?
“Those moments when you see the creation of a song like Bohemian Rhapsody or We Will Rock You by this group of misfits who wanted to sing to the everyone at the back of the room, is something we wanted to exemplify…”
More than anything, the movie is a celebration of Freddie, of the band and of the incredible music they made.
Critics are right that there is a whole other side of Freddie’s story that needs to be told – but that is a different film, another story.
Fans are not ignorant of the harsher realities and clay feet of their idol. Freddie’s fans have never shied away from every aspect of who he was and what made him so unique and special to millions.
Bohemian Rhapsody does what it set out to do and the phenomenal response to it is the only answer the filmmakers ever needed.
