Archive for Movies & TV

Monday Movie Review: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

February 23, 2009 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) (2007) 10/10
In 1987, in Romania, abortion is illegal and the populace, under Ceau?escu, is tightly controlled. Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) helps her college roommate Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) obtain an abortion. (In Romanian, with subtitles)

In 2007, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days won the Palm d’or, which is the Cannes Film Festival’s “best picture” award. Despite its extraordinary acclaim, it wasn’t even on the shortlist of films considered for the Best Foreign Language Oscar nomination. Not just wasn’t nominated; wasn’t submitted. Which created a long series of discussions in online film blogs about how the Foreign Language films are selected for Academy Awards and how Byzantine the process is, and that’s how this remarkable film came to my attention.

During the course of the film, there is at one point an extended discussion about how far along Gabita is. The abortionist (Vlad Ivanov) believes Gabita has lied to him. Perhaps she has. She wants an abortion and doesn’t want anything to interfere. Is two months easier? Is three? What if it’s a second trimester abortion? The abortionist points out his jail sentence would be much worse if he were caught. He is angry, he uses the lie to browbeat the young women. Although it is never explained, the suggestion is that the film’s title describes the actual length of the pregnancy.

I don’t watch many foreign films, not because I’m plebeian (which I am), but because I feel like I can’t truly grasp the filmmaker’s intention. Seen in Romania, the repressive, oppressive, Big Brother regime of the 1980s is utterly familiar. Seen in the U.S., I am learning as I go. Are there things the filmmaker took for granted that his audience would know? Am I missing the context? When I watched With a Friend Like Harry, I wondered, was Harry’s sex talk at the dinner table a sign of his poor boundaries? Or a sign that it’s a French film? Of course, I sometimes have that experience with U.S. films. Like The Apostle; I spent most of the movie thinking What? What? Why? What? Texas revival Christianity is a foreign language to me, just as Romanian is.

But then, if you avoid foreign films entirely, you miss jaw-dropping movies like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. It’s the naturalism, perhaps, that is so amazing. The movie takes place over the single day of the abortion. The women wax their legs, bum cigarettes, pack, complain to each other. There is no music at all, no beauty to be seen, and tension builds from nowhere, from the simple facts of the matter. Gabita appears to be not very bright; too helpless by half. Otilia helps her because she is smarter and more able, but also because she knows that it is important to help your friends when they need help. As the film progresses, we see her anger, and her fear, and how very dangerous this all is.

This is a dark movie, with seriously disturbing images. Watching it before bedtime was a mistake. But it’s an amazing movie, one that should definitely be seen.

Monday Movie Review: Man on Wire

February 16, 2009 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Man on Wire

Man on Wire (2008) 9/10
Philippe Petit, after six years of planning, successfully walked a high wire across the Twin Towers in 1974. Documentary.

There is no end to the charm and delight of Man on Wire. Here is a man utterly unlike you and me: A man who has dedicated his entire life to living art; he is a performance piece. He is not an adventurer, a psychotic with a death wish, or a circus freak. If you can’t accept that premise, you can’t really get into the movie.

Which you should, because it’s awesome. The movie practically made itself. Petit was interested in filming his work from the beginning, and so there is tons of footage for director James Marsh to put together. The project began before the towers were even built; when Philippe saw a sketch of the World Trade Center, before construction began, he knew that he had to walk across them.

Petit is a unique high-wire artist in that he is self-taught. Most such performers are raised in high-wire families, generally in the circus, and while Petit has worked in the circus, he came to it on his own. This gives him a completely different attitude towards his art than other high-wire performers have, and thus he came to the idea of public, illegal walks on landmarks and important public structures.

The first such walk he did was across the towers of Notre Dame in Paris, his home city. All the components of the Twin Towers walk were there, if in smaller scale; the planning with a group of friends, acquiring equipment, breaking in, and filming/photographing the whole event. But nothing in Paris or Sydney could approach the scale and complexity of the New York walk. How would the equipment be smuggled into the building? How would the wire get across from one tower to the other? How would Philippe manage the intense winds at such a height? All of this had to be planned.

At first, we see that Philippe is not long on planning. He wants spontaneity. As a result, his first attempt failed. But his team includes friends with greater attention to detail, and ultimately, famously, the whole thing came together.

My one complaint about Man on Wire is that the way documentary and recreated footage are placed together is confusing. It actually took me a while to figure out how to watch the film. It didn’t occur to me that Petit’s crew had actually been filming themselves for all these years; a little remark to that effect would have gone a long way.

September 11 is never mention in Man on Wire. It doesn’t need to be; we all know where those towers are now. But wherever we thought they were, they are now also a part of this joyful and bouyant film.

Dollhouse was…

February 14, 2009 / / 11 comments

not very good. I don’t even know what else to say. If it was anyone but Whedon, I wouldn’t be giving this show a second chance.

And for as much as I loved Dushku as Faith, the only sense of a real actor in the entire show was Harry Lennix. Everyone else was just being a pretty face.

Monday Movie Review: Two “and” Romantic Comedies

February 9, 2009 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Two “and” Romantic Comedies

Music and Lyrics (2007) 7/10
Ira and Abby (2006) 7/10

Music and Lyrics takes the form of a mainstream romantic comedy, following its conventions while being exceptionally witty and good-natured, and having some smart things to say.

Ira and Abby takes the form of an indieromantic comedy, following those conventions while being charming and clever, and having some unusual things to say.

Both movies are populated by Manic Pixie Dream Girls, and hello, was that a type that needed to be defined or what? But the thing about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is that she serves the needs of the male protagonist, just as the Magical Negro serves the needs of the white protagonist. In these movies, though, the women have lives of their own, and what’s interesting is that both are paying a price for being quirky and oddball, and so they are given more depth.

In Music & Lyrics, Drew Barrymore plays Sophie, and when Hugh Grant‘s Alex first meets her, he is at once sure she’s crazy. Which she seems to be, but soon we learn her oddball style is a response to a broken heart and wounded ego. An affair with a professor left her publicly humiliated and with no belief in the talents her mentor once nurtured. So she’s quirky, and this is a lot like Alex’s own quirkiness—an 80s has-been who takes nonchalant pleasure in capitalizing on his has-been status. The movie has the kind of pleasant and rapid wit Hugh Grant movies are known for, at the same time, it is somewhat serious about these people. They have injured self-esteem they cover up by seeming to celebrate the tiny corners they live in. Alex sings at amusement parks for his aging fans, Sophie waters plants, and neither exercises the talent they have until Alex gets an unusual opportunity to write a song and realizes Sophie can help him.

So, this is a conventional trajectory. Meet cute followed by thrown together followed by come together a little bit, then break apart, then reunite LALA! as the credits roll. But there’s a lot to love inside the arc. Brad Garrett as Alex’s manager, for one. A lot of really snappy dialogue, for another. High standards, for a third, meaning, you know, nothing like the extended and painful bathroom “joke” I was unfortunate enough to see in Two Weeks Notice. Also, the break-up is over artistic ethics, the commentary about the music business is clever, and so on.

Ira and Abby, being an indie, is more deeply committed to its quirkiness, and yet in some ways, is more conventional. Ira (Chris Messina) is the classic protagonist playing opposite the Manic Pixie Dream Girl; he’s nerdy, nervous, pessimistic, and fearful. He’s very much Woody Allen to Abby’s (Jennifer Westfeldt) Diane Keaton.

Abby’s quirks are costly to her as well. She is an extraordinarily open person, giving herself compassionately to everyone she meets. Who else could reach Ira, as closed off as he is? (Thus, serving the protagonist.) But her openness means she is too giving to be successful at her work, and her past heartbreaks are immense. This is considerably more interesting than the magical girl who shows up, changes the hero’s life, and, I dunno, glimmers.

Abby comes by her quirks honestly, as we realize when we meet her parents (Fred Willard and Frances Conroy). Very much about family, the movie gives us two rich sets of parents (Ira’s are Judith Light and Robert Klein), and when Ira and Abby meet and marry in a whirlwind, the families become intertwined.

Neither movie breaks beyond the boundaries of its own conventions to become a classic for the ages. Certainly, there are classic romantic comedies (It Happened One Night, Moonstruck, and Four Weddings and a Funeral come to mind, from three different decades), but if you just want a pleasant diversion with a higher than average intelligence quotient, either of these will do.

Monday Movie Review: Howl’s Moving Castle

January 26, 2009 / / 4 comments

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) 10/10
Sophie is a plain and serious young woman who runs a hat shop. Howl is a famous wizard who lives in a castle that walks about the countryside. After a chance meeting between them, Sophie is visited by the dreaded Witch of the Waste, who places Sophie under a curse, turning her into an old woman. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.

Howl’s Moving Castle is an extraordinary film experience. It is dense, surprising, and very human. The characters have a richness that belies their cartoony nature. The magical occurrences are wildly imaginative. My son and I would turn to each other while watching and say “I love this!” and “I can’t wait to see what happens next!”

The movie is not perfect. It is perhaps over-complicated, and definitely over-long. There is a war going on that both drives and is background to the real plot, which is the slowly burgeoning romance between Sophie and Howl, and more importantly, each character’s awakening. Sophie is brave and bold, but hates herself. She finds freedom as an old woman, no longer expected to be pretty or criticized for not fitting in. Howl is callow, his power and beauty let him get away with pretty much anything, and a moving home is the perfect avenue (and metaphor) for running away. Each must grow in order to find their love for the other.

Meanwhile, there’s this war. And a couple of different curses. And a talking fire voiced by Billy Crystal. Plus several other characters, some magical, some not, and demons and wizards and whoa, here comes the war again. So yeah, it’s a bit much.

But the delight in experiencing this rich and complex world is tremendous. The story is based on British fantasy novel, and overlaying it with a Japanese sensibility creates an otherworldly, magical blend. This is no place we know, in no time we’ve lived. It’s sort of 1910, sort of Katzenjammer Kids, sort of steampunk, sort of Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang meets Lord of the Rings. Every person, every magical creature, and every object is part of a unique and startling aesthetic.

The American voice work is very good. Christian Bale sounds exactly right for a Japanese film. It’s quite an all-star cast, including Jean Simmons as Old Sophie and Lauren Bacall as the Witch of the Waste.

As a comparison, I think Spirited Away is a better movie, but Howl’s Moving Castle is, in many ways, more original (and isn’t drawing from Japanese mythology and folk legends), and the character work is more interesting.

Monday Movie Review: Shadow of a Doubt

January 19, 2009 / / One comment

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) 10/10
Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten), who is being followed by the police, decides to skip town and visit his sister’s family, including his adoring niece, Young Charlie (Theresa Wright). Quickly we learn that Uncle Charlie is a murderer, bringing poisonous hatred to small town life. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Shadow of a Doubt is a difficult movie to review, because it is one of the most written-about movies of all time. It has been analyzed, dissected, and mapped for its construction, hidden meanings, echoes, reflections, symbolism, and structure by the greatest film critics ever. What, then, can I bring to the table? I’m not sure I even understand all the symbolism or the structure.

The basics of it, that everything in Shadow of a Doubt is in some way a reflection and opposite of everything else, is pretty clear. The lovely town of Santa Rosa is the reflection of the dark, run-down town Uncle Charlie escapes. Young Charlie is the twin/opposite of Uncle Charlie. The murder-obsessed neighbor is the twin/opposite of the real murders.

I think it’s impossible to view a Hitchcock movie without seeing the “Hitchcock” as well as the “movie.” His is a body of work that is distinctive, personal, and interconnected by his presence at the helm. So, while each movie stands alone, each is also a piece of the whole. (He completed 59 full-length films, some of which are rarities, and I’ve seen 28.)

At some level, all of Hitchcock’s films are about misogyny. They examine it (Notorious), laugh about it (To Catch a Thief), revel in it (The Birds), and delve into its depths (Psycho). Shadow of a Doubt is very interested in condemning it, but not without allowing deep hatred, in the form of Uncle Charlie, to be seductive and exciting.

Young Charlie is an innocent teenager, worshipful of her uncle. Her mother (Patricia Collinge) is innocent as well, a somewhat silly and naive woman. Charlie loves his sister, but she is surely everything he hates about women and about the world: She is defined by a small town and a small life that doesn’t reach beyond family and friends. As the movie opens, we might easily imagine Young Charlie headed along the same path, and we might even share Uncle Charlie’s disdain.

But Uncle Charlie is a poison, and as Young Charlie discovers this, her response is not to retreat into innocence, but to become resourceful, and a worthy match for him. While at first we can laugh, with Uncle Charlie, at small town and small-minded life, ultimately we root, with Young Charlie, for its values. This is truly not Hitchcock’s typical take on women, on resourcefulness, or on innocence. Hitch even has us rooting for the blandly romantic cop by the end, which again, not his usual take on cops. Ultimately, the cop places himself in service to Young Charlie’s power play with Uncle Charlie, rather than in strict service to the law. Charlie must defeat the demon herself.

All this is kind of conceptual without talking about the movie. It’s beautifully filmed, the acting is great, and Hume Cronyn is very funny. It has the kind of lush sense of presence that people mean when they say “classic.” The dialogue is sharp, and the screenplay brings tension and surprise.

Monday Movie Review: In Bruges

January 12, 2009 / / 4 comments

In Bruges (2008) 10/10
Two hit men (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) hole up in Bruges, Belgium awaiting instructions from their boss (Ralph Fiennes) after a hit goes wrong. Written and directed by Martin McDonagh.

I suppose you have to categorize movies, and having conceded that, I suppose you have to categorize In Bruges as a black comedy. It is definitely funny, I laughed a lot. Yet, I did not come away from watching In Bruges feeling as though I’d just watched a comedy. It was not goofy, or silly, or campy, or jokey.

In Bruges is funny because the characters are funny. Ray (Colin Farrell, who totally deserved his Golden Globe win), is absolutely childlike. He is alternately sweet and sulky and seems to be about seven years old. You can believe him as a hit man because he has some of the amorality of a small boy. He pouts, complains, whines, and blathers on in a way that puts me entirely into giggles. Meanwhile, Ken (Gleeson) tries to control him, like a kind uncle controlling a naughty but beloved nephew, and that, too, is a riot.

Bruges is a quiet town whose tourist attractions are canals, ancient churches, and a fairy tale beauty. Ken wants to sightsee, Ray is bored. Ken wants to see the Basilica of the Blood of Christ, Ray wants a beer. It’s funny, yes, but we get to know Ray and Ken, and they are people, not funny people. Farrell and Gleeson play their characters straight, and so the laughs come naturally.

Ray is not entirely amoral; all of the killers in this film, Ray, Ken, and their boss Harry (Fiennes) have a code of honor to which they adhere. Ray is haunted by what he has done; accidentally killed a child in the course of a hit. Perhaps his childlike quality makes doing wrong more painful; although he doesn’t care about the priest he was hired to kill, his sorrow over the child is inconsolable. This is where the acting is so amazing, Ray slips in and out of grief as a fresh memory overcomes him, and this changeable quality is masterfully conveyed.

Bruges is a kind of purgatory for Ray and Ken. Go there, they’re told, and wait to see the outcome of what you’ve done. They visit churches, and then an art museum where they see Bosch’s Last Judgement, and Ray wants to know if Ken believes in heaven and hell.

As the two hit men wander through Bruges, they find a film set, where Ray meets a beautiful drug dealer (the magical Clémence Poésy) and an American dwarf (Jordan Prentice) with some strange ideas about race relations. There are also obnoxious tourists, a Dutch prostitute, and an arms dealer who likes alcoves. Finally Harry himself arrives as fate tightens around our main characters. Fiennes is kind of channeling Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast for Harry, but he’s not entirely a monster. He, too, has a moral code, infinitely strict, and his main beef with Ray (with the whole world, in fact) is that he is not as strict. He is like a foul-mouthed avenging angel, forcing all around him to line up according to his code. Which is both very funny, and not.

So, yeah, I guess we shove square peg In Bruges into the round hole of black comedy, but to me it is so much more. It has great depth of character and performance, extraordinary beauty, and a lot of warmth. It felt like a drama that made me laugh, but perhaps it was a comedy that moved me. Either way.

Monday Movie Review: Out of the Past

January 5, 2009 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Out of the Past

Out of the Past (1947) 10/10
Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) owns a small-town gas station and woos a small-town girl, until a man from his past pulls him back into a life of deception and danger. Directed by Jacques Tourneur.

Five years ago, I broke my knee and spent four or five days in the hospital, during which, not surprisingly, I watched quite a lot of television, including a showing of Out of the Past. i didn’t much care for the movie, I found it disjointed and corny. Turns out I took an awful lot of Demerol and Percoset during those four or five days, and that may have affected my perception.

Out of the Past is a perfect film noir, hitting all the classic themes in exactly the right way. The femme fatale (Jane Greer) is beautiful and dangerous, the hero is witty and insouciant, yet cannot escape the hand of fate, and the shadows of night and the city are sharply contrasted with the sunshine of small town decency.

The first thing I noticed was the construction and pacing. Every beat hits at exactly the right moment. A dark stranger arrives in a small town. We hear about the hero before we see him, and then move away from darkness into light; Jeff and Ann (Virginia Huston) fishing at a secluded lake, and then embracing, and then discussing marriage, and only then does Jeff’s deaf employee (Dickie Moore) intrude with news of the stranger’s arrival.

Kathie Moffat, the femme fatale, is also introduced in conversation. Before we ever meet her, we know she’s shot Whit (Kirk Douglas), her powerful lover. Whatever we know of her afterwards, we are not to forget that she is capable of attempted murder, perhaps to steal forty thousand dollars, perhaps just to get away.

Whit wants Kathie back, and hires Jeff, at that time a private detective, to find her. Jeff follows her trail to Acapulco, his fascination growing, and we still have not yet seen Kathie onscreen. Before she appears, we know what will happen when she does. It’s inevitable: Jeff falls for Kathy and deceives Whit into believing he has not found her.

The introduction of the two principles are a perfect parallel. Jeff in an innocent, natural and loving setting, but haunted; Kathie in the midst of a deception, seductive and manipulative. Kathie is a trap, and Jeff is caught in it.

The film catches us up with Jeff’s past by means of his confession to Ann, then we are in the present with Jeff seeing Whit for the first time since betraying him. Late in the movie, we return to Ann’s small town to check in with events there, and it is startling how bright the sun shines there. Yes, we’ve been to Acapulco and Lake Tahoe, but the sun is only beautiful in Bridgeport; Jeff’s past-become-present is one long shadow.

Out of the Past is very interested in showing us goodness and evil, and contrasting them, but carefully notes that they don’t produce different results. At one point Kathie tells Jeff that she’s no good, and so is he, and that’s why they belong together. It struck me pretty powerfully in that moment, that Jeff had shown no real sign of being no good, except for falling for Kathie. Even when he betrayed Whit, he refused to take Whit’s payment. His only crime (as in, felony) was in covering up a worse crime of Kathie’s. We see from the start that he is honest with Ann, and even Whit says that he’s hired Jeff because he has a reputation for being both smart and honest. Maybe it’s “smart” that dooms him.

Every performance here is perfection. Mitchum is powerful, watching the world from under his dreamy eyelids, yet still entrapped by it. Kirk Douglas is excellent as a wealthy man who pulls every string, and Jane Greer is captivating. The plot and characterization strongly resemble The Maltese Falcon, but that doesn’t detract from the film.

The whole thing works together: Acting, directing, cinematography, wit, sensuality, morality, and the dark shadow of film noir falling over it all.

Monday Movie Review: Frost/Nixon

December 29, 2008 / / 6 comments

Frost/Nixon (2008) 9/10
Talk show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) sets out to interview disgraced former president Richard Nixon (Frank Langella). Frost is an entertainer, not a journalist, and appears to be outmatched, and to lack credibility. But Nixon’s desire to be heard becomes his undoing. Directed by Ron Howard.

Ron Howard was the right director for this project. There is a level at which Howard is disdained for being plebian, but a plebian is exactly what this movie needed; someone who could convey this material to an audience that is younger and doesn’t know the history, or is not younger but wasn’t paying all that much attention. Or knew what was going on, but didn’t get the nuance.

After all, the notion of journalistic credibility is a little more nuanced than simply turning on your TV to watch Nixon resign, or being angry that he was pardoned. Here we have two journalistic wonks (played ably by the ever-delightful Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt) worried about their careers if they get involved with a dilettante project instead of something serious. I have to wonder how many people who were adults in 1977 (as I was not) were really on top of that aspect of the event.

And the Watergate story is, after all, intensely convoluted. Crimes and dirty tricks. Conspiracy to cover-up those crimes. Secret tapes. Hearings. A massive tangle of corruption and wrong-doing and an extensive investigation into who all the players were and what they did and who they took their orders from. Most people are kind of confused about the whole thing.

So you want a director who can present complex information in a straightforward manner, without actually dumbing it down. I don’t see how Howard could have done a better job. Now, I haven’t seen the play, so I don’t know how much credit playwright Peter Morgan (who also did the screenplay) deserves, but the whole thing is commendable. It’s exciting, it’s smart, it engages the audience. There’s a seamless blend of documentary, pseudo-documentary, and drama.

And there’s that dreadful phrase about movies-from-plays, “opening up.” You don’t want the movie to look stagebound, but I have to say, I hate the artifice of forcing a play to look not stagebound. How often I’ve watched a movie and thought, Oh, here’s the “opening up” part. Yuck. That doesn’t happen here. The movement is so constant and normal that you have to stop and think to remember it’s a play. Perfectly done.

What everyone is talking about with Frost/Nixon is the performances. Sheen and Langella are great, of course. I mean, this whole movie is so watchable, so compelling, and it’s really just guys talking (there is only one important woman; the movie fails the Bechdel test).

I find Langella’s Nixon kind of problematic. Mostly, because you’re watching for the imitation; there’s just no way around that. Here’s someone not only famous, but famously imitated; they even throw that in—Oliver Platt does a quick and funny Nixon imitation, reminding us that everyone imitated Nixon, and reminding us that Langella is here to do something much more. At which, no doubt about it, he succeeds. His Nixon is complex, thoughtful, angry, sad, menacing, powerful, and smart. But what he isn’t, is charming.

After the first couple of days of interviews, we’re told one cameraman turns to another and says (paraphrasing), ‘I didn’t vote for him when I had the chance, but I would now if I could.’ Frost’s first days of interviewing Nixon were disasterous precisely because they made Nixon look so incredibly good. The world was charmed, and no one wanted the world to be charmed. But Langella doesn’t convey that.

I looked up some YouTube of Frost interviewing Nixon. Nixon was, in fact, astonishingly appealing. He had a sweet smile, he seemed clever and interesting. This is what Frost had to combat, and this is where Langella fails. He just doesn’t give us that side of the man, and without it, the audience isn’t one hundred percent sure what the problem is.

Despite this problem, I think it’s a must-see. They tell us that history is an adventure, but we rarely know it for ourselves. And those of us who were alive at the time may find it weird that it’s now “history,” but it is, and vitally important, and in Frost/Nixon, entertaining to watch.

Monday Movie Review: Milk

December 22, 2008 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Milk

Milk (2008) 9/10
Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) runs for San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming the first openly gay elected official in the U.S., and is assassinated by Dan White (Josh Brolin). Directed by Gus Van Sant.

So, a few weeks ago I reviewed The Times of Harvey Milk, and now I’ve seen the biopic. It’s really an extraordinary work in many ways. It makes a slice of recent history that few know about extraordinarily accessible, it blends real news footage with documentary-style film footage with more conventional filmmaking seamlessly, and the cast is amazing.

Sean Penn is transparent as Milk, he embodies the character fully. He leaps into his portrayal with a kind of gusto, nothing held back, and there isn’t a moment of screen time that I didn’t believe. The rest of the cast is great. Emile Hirsch, whom I missed in his Oscar-nominated performance last year, is extraordinary. It was a kind of now-I-get-it revelation of a performance for me.

But the acting shouldn’t detract from Van Sant’s great work here, as well as that of screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. This isn’t an easy story to tell. There is, first of all, the decision of where to begin and end, how much to tell. And then, how personal to make it, how political. How much of Dan White’s story to tell, how much of various other activists. Include the trial and its aftermath?

They’ve chosen to focus on Milk with a fairly tight lens, and to make the story mostly political. Milk has a personal life, he has lovers (Scott Smith, played by James Franco, and Jack Lira, played by Diego Luna), but what we know of Harvey is that he is shaped entirely by his political life.

The film is a wee bit of a hagiography. The documentary made clear that Milk was hot-tempered and difficult, and yet that didn’t make anyone love him less. The biopic is afraid to go there, and without the dark side of Milk, he seems a little softer than I suspect he really was. On the other hand, there’s something very smart about how it focuses on the public record and recollections of friends and associates, it is the Harvey that people knew, not a character study that pretends to know what makes him tick.

(Which is everything that’s wrong with biopics, with their facile fictionalization of explains-it-all childhood trauma; I’m talking to you Ray and The Aviator!)

Sometimes there isn’t a formative trauma. Sometimes people dedicate their lives to activism because they know it’s necessary, and because it energizes and shapes them. That’s a good enough reason, and if the people are compelling, we’ll get it. Harvey Milk is compelling.

Bring tissues.

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