There’s a lot of things I liked about Milk and only a very few things to dislike. I lived in San Francisco for a couple of years so I already knew a bit about Harvey Milk and Dan White, but I didn’t know the details and I never saw the Oscar-winning documentary, Times of Harvey Milk.
I did know that Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected public official in the U.S., elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors. And I did know that both he and SF Mayor Moscone were murdered by another Supervisor, Dan White. (This is not a spoiler – if you don’t know the history, you’re told this within the first few minutes of the film.)
The stuff I liked -
Or course there’s Sean Penn’s amazing performance. It’s a complete physical and mental transformation for him and it is the best performance I’ve seen all year. Not just his voice but the entire way he carries himself, the look in his eyes, the way he moves and walks, it’s a Sean Penn you’ve never seen before. And yes, in a smackdown between Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke, Penn should take the prize in my opinion.
The rest of the cast is also quite good. Josh Brolin is a subtle and nuanced Dan White, the portrayal never descends into stereotype, even though some of his motives are only hinted at and never fully explained. James Franco shows his versatility, 180 degrees away from his gentle stoner in Pineapple Express. Emile Hirsch follows roles in Into the Wild (directed by Penn) and Speed Racer with this winning performance as street hustler turned political operative Cleve Jones.
I don’t know how much of this Hollywood biography has been fictionalized, I’m sure some. But Gus Van Sant does an excellent job of mixing (sometimes in separate shots, sometimes digitally) archival footage with the new material wonderfully shot by cinematographer Harris Savides (who did something similar with David Fincher’s Zodiac).
The main thing that struck me about the film is that so often in these Hollywood productions about a fight for liberty or a life that many of us know little about, they use a condescending way into the story. Allen Parker’s Mississippi Burning comes to mind, a tale of the struggle for civil rights in the south, where the leads were Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe. Van Sant doesn’t invent a “straight best friend” character for Milk, he immerses us in the story right from the beginning, as stodgy Republican gay Milk picks up gay hippie Scott Smith in the NYC subways.
Milk is about to turn 40 and as he says, has yet to do a single thing in his life that he is proud of. He and Smith move to San Francisco and open a camera shop and Milk finds himself pulled into politics because of his sense of moral outrage over the way he and his friends are being treated in their community. He loses in three elections but doesn’t give up and when he finally wins, his one year in office in a relatively minor position has a huge national impact. How much is true, how much fictionalized, I can’t say. But this is an inspiring tale regardless of your sexual persuasion.
In particular, much of the final third of the film, as Milk led the campaign against California’s Proposition 6 (which would have required firing not only of gay school teachers but any other teachers who “supported” them) is a reminder of not only how far we’ve come but how far we still need to go. Coming out as it did on the heels of 2008′s Proposition 8 in California may have been an accident, but it shows just how much work needs to be done before a large segment of the population can enjoy equal rights.
The film is not perfect. It sags in spots and I would have a liked a bit more insight into Dan White. But over all, it is a very good film indeed, filled with excellent performances, and telling an important part of American history. I strongly recommend it!
