Milk

"Without hope, life's not worth living.  You've gotta give 'em hope."

I went with my mother and her husband to see Milk on Christmas Day and found it timely in ways both expected and not so much.  I already knew that the story of one of the first openly gay men elected to public office in the United States was intertwined with that of a California proposition whose maliciousness towards gay people outdid even that of the recently-passed Proposition 8.  I hadn't expected to hear echoes in his words of Barack Obama's speeches and see such a connection between two unexpectedly-successful politicians with life stories well out of the mainstream.  This movie is all about the audacity of hope and what you can accomplish with it.

I assume that by now most people have heard the general outline of the story of Harvey Milk's life: Navy officer, insurance company closet case, San Francisco camera-shop owner, business and community organizer, politician, and finally murder victim.  The story is told in flashback, with actual period footage ranging from mid-century gay bar raids to a news clip of the shocked young Dianne Feinstein announcing the murders of her fellow Supervisor Milk and Mayor George Moscone, whom she would soon succeed (this clip can be seen starting at about 2:25 here).  Interspersed throughout the film are brief scenes of actor Sean Penn as Milk narrating a series of "if I'm assassinated" legacy tapes.  None of this is fictional; the real Milk did make such tapes.  I knew the story going in.

"Forty years old, and I haven't done a thing."

The main timeline of the movie takes up Milk's life just as he's turning forty, still closeted but picking up a handsome young man in the New York subway to celebrate his birthday with and worrying that he hasn't accomplished anything, an existential panic I can certainly identify with.  They're soon off to San Francisco, where as a small-business owner he harnesses the power of the gay community to support gay-owned businesses and is unofficially dubbed the Mayor of Castro Street (the title of journalist Randy Shilts' 1982 biography of Milk). 

"My name is Harvey Milk, and I am here to recruit you!"

Milk's emphasis on coming out of the closet and how much more effective the struggle for basic rights would be if people knew that their friends, family, and fellow citizens were gay and his distaste for a campaign that hid gayness to "play it safe" both found their echoes in the recent campaign against Prop 8.  But I had never realized the viciousness of the 1970s Prop 6, which not only called for the firing of gay teachers but also of any teacher who so much as spoke in favor of gay rights.  Milk would have been disgusted at the timidity of the official anti-Prop 8 campaign's ads, which avoided even mentioning the word gay or showing actual gay people.

 

Sean Penn is rather prettier than Harvey Milk was in real life, but he does a spectacular (Oscar-worthy) job in the role.  The recreations of specific events like the parade (above, in real life and in the film) and the casting of the movie's real life characters (some of whom consulted on the film) are superb.  I was particularly thrilled by Emile Hirsch's portrayal of Cleve Jones, whom I knew of previously from Shilts' other work, And the Band Played On, as a San Francisco political aide and activist in the early days of the AIDS epidemic and the originator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.  They did a good job of finding talented actors with a physical resemblance to the real people, and it was amazing to see the young Jones as a smart (and smart-ass) teenager recruited by Milk into politics and to see dramatizations of historical events like the candlelight march that I had known only as words on a page.  I was also impressed by James Franco as Milk's handsome but apolitical lover and by Josh Brolin's nuanced (even sympathetic) portrayal of unbalanced Supervisor Dan White.

I cried near-continually throughout the movie, shuddering periodically with rage at the prejudice and gay-bashing on display but unbearably moved by the foreshadowed tragedy and by seeing earlier stages of a civil rights movement that has echoed through my own life all the way to last month's election.  Though some timelines are compressed and some scenes fictionalized slightly, this is the next best thing to a documentary.  By the final slideshow combining the actors from the movie with period snapshots of the real people they portrayed, I was a soggy mess.

I also can't help but wonder whether Milk's assassination changed the course of medical history.  There was no single replacement for him as a gay community leader a few years later when AIDS first came to public attention.  Would he have had the foresight to push for earlier closure of the San Francisco bathhouses that provided such fertile ground for the early spread of AIDS?  He might have had the political capital to make it happen.  He could have saved lives.  Or perhaps not; his judgment in his own love life was decidedly uneven and he was a businessman and a politician.

"If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

The film is superb.  See the trailer here.  Then see the movie.

Comments

[Marilee J. Layman]

I could have sworn I commented on this already, but I think maybe it was Ginger's review. I plan to see it, but I am way behind on movies. I saw that the Prop 8 folks are going to be required to give the names of donors!

[Susan de Guardiola]

Yeah, I liked that the judge basically said that who supported these propositions was exactly the sort of thing sunshine laws were written for. I notice it's already brought out the Mormon church's outright falsehood about its financial support.

[Serge]

Milk was a Navy officer?

You know, this reminds me of something I read when I was living in the Bay Area, that the Navy basically created San Francisco's gay community because, whenever it found that someone in its ranks was a homosexual, it'd discharge him. As to Navy was quite present in the Bay Area, it was a very likely place for someone to be let out and to ask himself "What now?"

As for the movie, I don't think it's still playing here in Albuquerque. I hope they release the movie in time for the Oscar.

[Serge]

Dropped a word.

I hope they release the movie on DVD by then.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Serge:
Yes, he served on submarines during the Korean War and in San Diego as a diving instructor (meaning diving submarines, I think). I need to read the Shilts biography.

[Serge]

Susan... Not too bad for a 'sissy', eh?

As for the bathhouses... If he had been alive, and had advocated for their closure, Milk would probably have been torn down by our side. Republicans may be big on Saints, but not us: the moment our Saints show themselves to be flawed, that's it. They become Sinners. They're neither. They do the best they can, but that's too human.

[Marilee J. Layman]

Well, and there's always been "pleasure palaces" just outside the gates of a Navy base, and they aren't all for heterosexuals. The Army & Air Force have some of the same "just outside the door" areas, but it's not like the Navy where you've been on a ship for months.

[Serge]

Pleasure palaces? They actually called them that? Oh goodness.

[Serge]

I'll be in the Bay Area the last week of the month for my yearly review and I just remembered that the Castro Theater will be showing "Milk". Yay!

[Marilee J. Layman]

Serge, it's not alway in their name because of morals, you know, but for many years, town police looked away when a ship came into port.

[Serge]

Heh... My father-in-law was in the Navy, but I don't think he was very rowdy. He did say that going to Paris in 1958 and seeing those scantily clad danseuses was quite a... ah... revelation.

[Susan de Guardiola]

Serge:
The actual bathhouse closure fight in San Francisco turned into an internecine brawl among Democrats, gay activists, health officials, and politicians. It was not exactly a moment of glory all around. I'm not sure Republicans were completely extinct in SF in the 1980s, but they weren't a big factor.