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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.

Monday Movie Review: The Times of Harvey Milk

September 29, 2008 / / 3 comments

The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) 8/10
This documentary tells the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay city official elected in the United States. Opening with his assassination, the movie goes back to his life, focusing on his time in San Francisco politics, which ended with his assassination (along with Mayor George Moscone) by Dan White. The film examines the aftermath of Milk’s death, including White’s “Twinkie defense” trial and its results. Directed by Rob Epstein.

I think the most important thing to remember when watching The Times of Harvey Milk is that it was made in 1984, a mere six years after the events depicted. It was made before AIDS was known about by anyone other than epidemiologists. Before gay marriage existed as a political issue. The people interviewed in the movie have had only a short time to gain any perspective on their experiences and their loss. It also explains the hair.

It’s as if the film is two time capsules; the capsule of San Francisco in the 1970s, the beginning of a flamboyant Gay Rights movement, the birth of Castro Street as a gay cultural center, and the high cost of this kind of openness. As well, the capsule of speaking openly as a gay activist to a filmmaker in 1984; neither of these times exist anymore, both are worth looking at.

One interesting thing about watching a documentary is that it allows you to look at your own perceptions and memory. I was a teenager in the 70s. I remember that someone named Harvey Milk was killed. I remember there was a “Twinkie defense” murder trial; I did not remember they were the same murder. I remembered nothing about peaceful or violent demonstrations either. Yet these were important events, and you and I are living in a world very much touched by these events. Harvey would have been proud.

The use of news footage, interviews, photographs, and home movies is well-done. Watching the film is seamless. The film is honest about Milk’s flaws; his combativeness, restlessness, and temper. It is honest about the flaws of gay activists in general; it doesn’t try to portray riots as a good thing, although it is sympathetic to the frustrations that led there. The net effect is kind of adulatory, but the details are not.

Unfortunately, “missing’ footage is not addressed. Early on we learn that Milk’s partner was named Scott Smith. Thereafter, Smith disappeared. I assume he declined to be in the movie, but the film would have been improved by saying so. Is he alive or dead? Was he still Milk’s partner when Milk was killed? Was he at the candlelight vigil that night? The movie doesn’t say. And as you can see, it really stuck in my craw. It dangled, unspoken. People have partners; life is shaped by that. There was a partner for a split-second, and then whoosh, he was gone. In a movie about gay life and about the profound effect of coming out of the closet, that’s too big an omission. An explanation should have been offered.

Anyway, that’s minor. This is an amazing piece of history that too few people know. Rent the movie now, before Milk comes out.

 
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