Hola all. Massawyrm here.
I wish to god they had found a better name than Milk for this film. No, I know. The name is entirely appropriate, what with it being the last name of the title character. But it’s just not evocative. When I tell people “You’ve really got to see Milk,” they just kind of stare blankly at me or giggle a little. “No, really. Milk is one of the best things you’ll see all year.” More strange looks. Then “Oh, is that the new Sean Penn movie?” Yes, yes it is. And it is every bit as good as you could hope for out of this kind of movie.
The second FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION 70’s biopic to come our way this year is one about the first openly gay elected official in the United States and his subsequent murder/assassination that made headlines for more than one reason. Harvey Milk was the first ICONIC major gay rights activist in this country and fought a war one block at a time to protect the rights and lives of his fellow homosexuals. And he did so politically with the power of voting and backroom deals with other powerful lobbies like the Teamsters Union.
Sean Penn plays Harvey and does something you virtually NEVER see out of a Penn performance. He plays him likable. Not just endearing, but positively charismatic and lovable. There isn’t a doubt in your mind why this man becomes a focal point for the movement in the 70’s. He’s amiable, funny, persistent and has a heart as big as his chest. He’s also a very flawed man who occasionally gets himself deeper than he can dig himself out. And Penn delivers a knockout performance, channeling his own (sadly oft neglected onscreen) charisma into Harvey and making him every bit as epic as his legend. It is through Harvey’s struggle for acceptance and a very public victory that he highlights the fight in the 70’s just to be able to be gay in public – let alone be openly gay in a job.
Which brings me to the single most frustrating point about this film, the fact that it was released 6 months too late. Let’s see how familiar this scenario sounds to you. Taking place in 1978, a group of religious fundamentalists have lobbied to get a law on the California ballots: Proposition 6, a law allowing school districts to fire openly gay teachers. The fight gets dirty, raucous and all eyes of the country are focused upon California to see what the future held for gay America. Cough. Ahem. Yeah. That doesn’t sound familiar at all. Of course this time around (just this month in fact) there was no Harvey Milk and Proposition 8 passed. And there are few films that will make you angrier about that fact than Milk. To think what might have happened if this beautiful film had been available to speak not to the bigoted masses, but to the fearful, easily manipulated folk who simply voted with the 52% majority because they hadn’t heard an argument to convince them otherwise.
Those are the folks that really decided that election. Not the bigots. Not the fundamentalists. The regular, average, everyday salt of the earth folk who see a gay marriage on the TV news and rather than seeing two people in love see two dykes in dude hairdos French kissing to show off their gayness to the world. They don’t know what they’re watching. They haven’t figured it out yet. Because no one has done an adequate job of putting a very human face on the gay rights movement. Until now.
Milk is the single most important gay film ever made. Look, I’ll be the first to admit, gay/lesbian cinema is usually pretty bad. Once in a blue moon we get something really great that can cross over, something like Priest or Jeffrey or Hedwig and the Angry Inch or Brokeback Mountain. But all of those films are about the nature of accepting gays as who and what they are and letting them be. None of them are about accepting them truly as equals. That’s what Milk is. It is that film that puts the lifestyle out in the open and asks the audience “Really? You have a problem with this?”
One of Gus Van Sant’s brilliant touches is that he frontloads this thing with as much in your face homosexuality as he can without ever being tasteless. While he’s not throwing full frontal dudity or gay orgies at you, he does open with a romantic meeting of two men on a stairwell that leads to a pick up and them falling into bed together. Guys are kissing all over the place and if Brokeback Mountain made your toes curl uncomfortably, this is gonna make your balls crawl up into your abdomen to hide. Harvey Milk isn’t just effeminate – I was able to light cigarettes off of Penn’s performance sitting in the theater. But then, about 20 minutes in, Van Sant relaxes and stresses character and story over lifestyle. And the effect is perfectly brutal, destroying any aversion you might have to homosexual acts and begin to see these men as they really are. As people. More importantly, people being oppressed by the beliefs of others. It’s an effect not unlike Ang Lee’s approach to Brokeback Mountain in which you begin to forget that you’re watching a GAY LOVE story and focus only on the fact that it is a LOVE story.
And when all is said and done, Harvey has won you over and will have you wanting to march out in the streets to help secure gay rights. About a month or so too late. That’s why I wish this had been out six months ago. So that people could have seen it, talked about it and mailed DVD screeners to crucial districts. “Oh, look honey! That nice Ellen Degeneres mailed us a free copy of that new Sean Penn film everyone is talking about. Let’s watch it.” Would it have changed the outcome? Maybe. Maybe not. But it certainly would have changed the nature of the conversation. Given people a face to visualize outside of the lesbians that want to destroy marriage on the evening news.
Milk isn’t just the best gay civil rights movie ever made, it is probably the best civil rights film of the decade. And all of that is before you tackle the notion of the murder, which simply brings it around to be one of the best and most important films of the year.
Josh Brolin is great in a layered performance as the infamous Dan “Twinkie Defense” White. If anything I felt he was just a little underrepresented in the film. While it opens and closes with aspects of White’s story, it is chiefly a film celebrating Harvey Milk’s life, not his death and the media circus surrounding it. While the other elements are touched upon, White’s story takes a backseat to that of Milk fighting the religious right over Prop 6. That said, Brolin delivers a heroic effort to make sure White earns every bit of screen time he is given. And while he was good, having just seen how incredible he can be in W., it was a much more down played and will probably be somewhat less noticed – especially come Oscar time when both Penn and Brolin will no doubt receive BEST ACTOR nods. The other two standout performances are Emile Hirsch who has simply stopped surprising me – he’s always incredible – and James Franco who breathes more life into this role than any of his recent efforts. He’s positively alive in this as if he’s finally found a character that excites him.
This is a Van Sant film more akin to his work in the early to mid 90’s – daring, important and a must see – than his more experimental work as of late, which has been very hit or miss. Milk really is one of those TOP 5 FILMS that will appear on virtually every year end list and accrue an incredible amount of praise, nominations and awards – every last bit of it earned. This was one of those rare screenings in which every critic in town turned up and they all walked out stunned at just how incredible a film it was. Do not miss this one.
And if you get the chance, take a bigoted friend. Blow his mind.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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