Bohemian Rhapsody’s Oscar Wins

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY is the film that won the most Oscars in the recent Academy Awards. It bagged Best Actor for Rami Malek, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing.

Of all these wins, the most expected was Rami Mark for his stellar acting, transforming himself into the character of Freddie Mercury with such authentic intensity. This Oscar was well deserved.

Given the complexity of incorporating Mercury’s actual singing voice into Malek’s performance, both Sound Editing and Mixing were also worthy of their wins. The singing was actually flawless and those performances actually helped in the overall appeal of the film.

Perhaps the most contentious was that of Best Editing. There were questions buzzing in social media about how actually bad the editing was. One particular scene, that of the band meeting their eventual manager, was dissected and critiqued for having too many cuts, a lot of them were unmotivated and jarring. How could this badly edited scene bring an Oscar Best Editing win to this film?

Personally, I didn’t mind the editing. I wasn’t jarred at all; in fact, I thought the editing was well-paced. There wasn’t a single boring moment, and in this age of quick cuts for the very short attention span audiences, the film worked. Quick cuts can easily be forgiven.

I guess it has to be acknowledged that the film suffered from a change of directors. And in the editing world, such a problem could lead to many challenges, including marrying styles of directing, not to mention handling less ideal coverage to make the film work. If anything, having the film edited as coherent and as engrossing as it is despite this obstacle would have been the major reason for its Best Editing win.

In the end, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY was a successful film that had mass audience appeal. There were a lot of controversies surrounding it; in particular, its homophobic condescension of depicting Mercury’s life and the sanitised treatment of his gay lifestyle.  Most critics hated it. Yet despite that, the audiences around the world loved it… and so did the Oscars.