Milk

Unless you've watched your fair share of American documentaries, you probably have never heard of Harvey Milk. In the last few years, the topic of gay marriage has come up. The notion that evangelicals and the right discovered this topic that appeals so strongly to the base that they will come out in droves to vote is not something that's ten years old. It dates back to the 1970s.

The anti-gay movement found an unlikely leader, one Anita Bryant, a Christian singer and promoter of orange juice. Raised a Baptist, she fought against anti-discrimination laws saying that gays did not deserve equal protection for employment. In other words, it was fine for gays to be fired for being gay.

At that point, there had been no openly gay official elected.

Harvey Milk ran as supervisor, which is a kind of city representative for several years. Although he could court the gay vote, he really needed a coalition to be successful, so he recruited union workers, the elderly, African Americans, etc. Although he ran and lost three times, the fourth time was the charm as redistricting gave him enough votes to get elected (the election used to be city wide, rather than different parts of the city voting for the person that might best represent their interests).

At the same time he was elected supervisor, so was one Dan White who grew up Irish Catholic and ran on more conservative grounds, despite living in the fairly liberal city of San Francisco. At first, Milk tried to work with White, but when he realized it was not in his interests to do so, White greatly resented what he perceived as backstabbing and chose to oppose every action Milk proposed.

White eventually resigned his position because he felt the salary he made was too little to support his family. However, the conservative police encouraged him to ask for his job back. As the sole conservative supervisor, other supervisors, including Milk begged the mayor not to give White back his job. The mayor agreed. White decided to sneak into the building through an unguarded window (even at the time, there was a metal detector to enter the facility) and proceeded to shoot and kill the mayor and then shoot and kill Harvey Milk.

White then turned himself in to the police. A sympathetic jury let him off with manslaughter, moved by his plight. He spent five years in jail. When released, he wanted to move back to San Francisco though was advised not to do so. In 1985, White killed himself through carbon monoxide poisoning in a car in his ex-wife's garage.

The film, despite my summary of history, mostly focuses on Milk, as it should.

He's not made out to be particularly saintly, but a man who feels that gays needed to be more proactive. While most gays in San Francisco were willing to let change occur slowly, Milk, who loved the publicity of campaigning took a more direct route.

The problem with telling a story like Milk is that a person's life is not easily summarized in two hours. There's a bit of a clunky voice-over, in this case, Milk reading into a tape recorder (which is based on something Milk did). Then, you have to pick and choose what events to cover, including two boy friends (the activist/politician Scott Smith and Latino, Jack Lira), and various campaign bids.

When you want to be reasonably truthful to history, then there are speeches that need to be used near verbatim. Of course, one takes a few liberties. In the film, Lira kills himself as he did in real life, but in real life, Lira had already split up with Milk though certainly still liked him.

Gus Van Sant is generally an experimental filmmaker, more so than most in mainstream filmmaking. Despite that, he occasionally makes blander fare, telling a more straight-forward story. These would include films like Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester.

Van Sant does have a few visual flourishes. At one point, Milk is running away from someone he perceives is out to attack him. To achieve this visual effect, the entire background is blurred until you just see hazy lights and the shadow of a person.

Van Sant uses his trademark "following camera" used as early as Elephant where the camera is behind a person's head as he walks down hallways, and occasionally in front of his head as he is walking. This is used when White goes to find the mayor and Milk.

Although it is a film about a gay man, the gay scenes are not particularly explicit. In particular, there are no frontal nudity scenes. Most of the scenes are usually close up kissing, usually much closer than conventionally filmed scenes.

The film has a pretty simple theme that it tries to get across. It starts when Milk complains that at the age of 40, he's not accomplished anything in his life that he's proud of. By the time he's nearing 50, he is able to get himself elected as city supervisor, which is surprising given the year is 1978, a scant 30 years ago. Despite the progress in the gay movement and the changing public perceptions, this is still very recent.

His death stirred tens of thousands of people to mourn, bringing candles out into the street.

So how was the film? Well, it is clunky in parts, because of the need to tell important parts of his life. Van Sant does what he can to keep things light and humorous and not perpetually angry.

Sean Penn does a masterful job at creating Harvey Milk. Honestly, if you wanted to get an actor that looked like Milk, you'd probably hire Hank Azaria. Penn, nonetheless, does a great job. The funny thing is that Milk didn't have a gay campy voice where Penn chooses to play him with a slight affectation, perhaps to increase the believability to the audience, who might otherwise not feel Milk was gay enough.

And there may have been a point. Perhaps Penn felt that people might like Milk more if he didn't sound gay, but that they should like him regardless. So by voicing him this way, audiences would have to accept Milk despite a potential dislike of the way he speaks (as portrayed by Penn). Or maybe he just wanted to up the level of difficulty in portraying Milk.

The other capable acting comes from Josh Brolin who plays Dan White. Early on, Milk suggests that White may have been a closeted homosexual, although this is never played up beyond that mere suggestion. Brolin captures how wired up White is, unable to make friends, wanting to do something for his constituents, feeling backstabbed by Milk who found himself wanting to help White, but feeling that he couldn't.

The good thing about historical films is what they teach you. Admittedly, this may not make for the best drama. Indeed, the acting is stronger than the plotting and pacing of the film, although the film gets stronger towards the end.

Although a lot of progress has been made in gay civil rights, the film shows, in the backdrop of today's politics, that in some respects, some things, especially scare tactics, have not changed. Where the film had a political happy ending (the defeat of Prop 6 to prevent gay teachers from teaching), real life did not match that (with Prop 8 passing).

Overall, a good well-acted film but not a great film. Good for its historical insight and even handling of the characters. B.