Milk is magnificent. It is a phenomenal triumph in every conceivable way. Intellectually compelling and emotionally heartrending, the film is one of the most profound and inspiring presentations of an American political leader I have ever seen.
Milk is not the tale of a life, but rather a calling. When we first meet Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), he is just hours shy of turning 40 years old and “has done nothing in my life I can be proud of.” Aimless and desperate for purpose, Harvey and his lover Scott Smith (James Franco) decide to leave New York City and resettle in the heart of a predominantly gay neighborhood in San Francisco.
As more and more of the neighborhood’s gay residents fall prey to violent assaults and sadistic police brutality, Harvey decides someone needs to stand up and say something. Harvey’s natural inclination is to rescue everyone around him, to protect all those who fall within his reach. Politics allows him to do that on a colossal scale. With grassroots support from the neighborhood and young activists like Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), Harvey dives in headfirst. He fails, again and again and again but refuses to be thrown off course. Forging coalitions across the political spectrum — from senior citizens groups to trade unions — the loquacious, buoyant Harvey Milk is finally elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, becoming the first openly gay man to ever be voted into public office in America.
Harvey’s tenure becomes a delicate balancing act of serving his constituents’ needs while also fighting desperately for civil rights for homosexuals, basic rights that are threatened on ballots nationwide. While he finds support from the mayor, another newly elected supervisor, Dan White (Josh Brolin), clashes with him at every turn. As the men’s political agendas increasingly diverge, their individual destinies tragically collide.
Director Gus Van Sant doesn’t hide Harvey Milk’s martyrdom; he reveals it in the opening moments of the film. Milk’s death informs the entire narrative, dancing a fine line, always bitter, even tragic, but never morose. Milk’s life and work is imbued with such optimism and hope that even an assassin’s bullet cannot obliterate its dynamism. Milk’s legacy continues to reverberate, even today. As California, and indeed the nation, wrestles with the implications of Proposition 8, the California initiative to ban gay marriage, Milk may, for some, provide catharsis and the sense of a bigger picture, and for others, the deferred fear of having roused a sleeping giant.
Van Sant, the man behind such films as Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho and Good Will Hunting, is one of Hollywood’s few openly gay directors. With Milk, he has not simply succeeded artistically, but achieved what has to be a very personal victory. Milk is a love letter to a heroic figure from a man who understands that his own life has been made better by those who went before him. But do not assume Milk is merely propaganda or dismiss the film’s credibility because of the director’s beliefs. It would be a mistake to reduce the film or diminish the filmmakers in that way.
Milk is exquisitely, if minimalistically, directed and edited. The cinematography is often muted, dim and grainy, all the better to match the preponderance of stock footage seamlessly integrated throughout. Danny Elfman, best known for his superhero scores, is a Van Sant regular and, as with his other efforts, finds a luscious balance of beauty and pathos.
Van Sant films his love scenes as if he is wholly unaware that some may find them off-putting or offensive. But it is never a matter of rubbing our faces in it. He simply celebrates the physical expressions of love for which he is the most familiar and comfortable, in the same way that a straight director wouldn’t be concerned about how a kiss between a man and a woman will be perceived.
Van Sant’s jubilant, tragic remembrance is a profoundly moving, at times even epic, experience. Harvey Milk’s triumph was not simply a victory for gay rights. He fundamentally altered the very nature of what it means to joust for basic human rights on a field of battle swollen with ferocious resistance. Everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, owes men and women like Harvey Milk a debt of profound gratitude. So too, we should celebrate those who illuminate their lives for us.
© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.
