Before taking on a performing artist who is battling AIDs in 1980s New York in Ira Sachs‘ latest Cannes feature The Man I Love, star Rami Malek said, “I can’t do this, there’s too many similarities.”
Similarities to his Oscar winning Best Actor role of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody who also suffered from AIDs.
“It could be problematic,” he thought after he read the script. “There was a certain sense of fear.”
In The Man I Love, Malek plays fictional character Jimmy George, a well-known singer and performer, in 1980s New York. He’s just survived a three-week stay in a hospital after an HIV–spell. He ventures on, rehearsing for a stage piece based on André Brassard’s 1974 film Once Upon a Time in the East, playing the stormy and defiant Hélène, who sings with a band.
Set against the 1980s New York, at the peak of Ronald Regan’s America reactionary homophobia, the movie doesn’t focus on the dark side of Jimmy’s struggle with AIDs but rather his desire to keep moving, to be unapologetically alive and energized to give all you have left to art.
Dissecting what concerned him about the connection between Freddy Mercury and Jimmy George, Malek pondered, “was it the singing? Was it what was going on in the period. I knew I had to address the fear. If there was anything that Freddie taught me it was to address the fear. If there’s anything I learned from Ira (Sachs) is that he makes unique cinema unlike any other, and I knew I was in extraordinary hands. If he was choosing me, I could rely on him, not only to depend on him throughout the film, but to elevate it, to push myself, to force myself to race into that fire. When I raced into, I started to discover that these were men who were similar, but they were also worlds apart.”
“You have an icon, a legend in Freddie who really had a destination whereas Jimmy is just searching for creativity, and love and intimacy and joy in every moment. Does he sing as well as Freddie, no.”
“Was he ever going to be perfect? He didn’t have to be. It was just about this element of creating, and living and joy and New York in that period was a very different time.”
“I see them as two radically different figures altogether,” said Malek about Freddie Mercury and Jimmy George.
The Man I Love, out of the gate here at Cannes, is already generating Oscar buzz again for Malek. Mubi has the pic offshore, with U.S. up for grabs. The Man I Love earned a ten-minute standing ovation at its world premiere last night.
Sachs was here at Cannes previously with 2019’s Frankie.
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