Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

I got an e-mail last weekend from the great Matt Dentler, formerly of South By Southwest, about how you can now see THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK online:

“Friends,

I wanted to let you know that Cinetic is thrilled to present the digital/VOD premiere of Rob Epstein's Oscar-winning documentary, THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK, on Amazon VOD.

It is available for digital purchase or rental here.

It will also be available on iTunes in a couple days.

All my best,
Matt”

I bring it up because I think anyone who is interested in really understanding Harvey Milk and the importance of who he was and what he did in California should start with that documentary, which remains one of the best examples of the form that I can think of. Seriously. You should go check out that documentary if you’ve never seen it because it’s an amazing film that does a great job of telling an amazing story.

If you want to understand what it is that Harvey Milk meant to both gay Americans and what sort of legacy he’s left behind, then I’d say Gus Van Sant’s warm, big-hearted MILK is a good place to start, since it’s not so much a typical biopic as it is a reaction to a man’s life and a reflection of just what it was that these filmmakers saw in him. I don’t think MILK transcends its genre, but I do think it’s a great example of why Hollywood is continually drawn to the biopic as a showcase for actors and as a vehicle for social messages. By telling the story of this one person, Van Sant has managed to encapsulate an entire moment, a time and place, and he’s also made a film that speaks directly to how we’re living right now.

As soon as a group of us walked out of the screening of a film a few weeks back, still pre-election day, the conversation immediately turned to the use of this film as a political tool in the battle over Proposition 8 here in California, and several reviewers felt that the film should have been hurried into theaters so that the film could have been part of the dialogue about that potential legislature. Personally, I think the film would have been lost in the furor, and what the film has to say is larger than any one election cycle. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay politician elected to a major office in the United States, and what I liked most about Van Sant’s film is that it doesn’t position Harvey as a saint, but rather as a fairly shrewd operator who played the system very, very well, and whose sexuality may have helped motivate him, but it was hardly the only thing that defined him. Reducing the film to a simple “No on Prop 8” commercial reduces Harvey himself, and he deserves better.

Van Sant wisely deals with the notion of male-on-male physical affection within the first ten minutes of the movie, when Harvey (Sean Penn), celebrating his 40th birthday, first encounters Scott Smith (James Franco). It sets a tone of intimacy and explicitness that it continues to assert throughout, which is good. The film can't be called soft in terms of showing the intimate side of these relationships. It’s a quick pick-up that leads to a lasting relationship, and when the two of them start a business together, Castro Camera, it lays the groundwork for Harvey’s gradual political awakening. He sees the way the community greets him, the way his customers are treated in other stores, and, very simply, he gets angry. He’s tired of it. He’s looking for a place he can call home, and this place, this neighborhood, he sees potential in it, and he realizes that everyone’s talking about these same things, and all it’s going to take is one person who says them out loud. And Harvey steps up. His anger turns to action, and that’s the message of Harvey Milk’s life. His death, which is also dealt with in explicit manner in this film, is certainly noteworthy, but it does not define him. What defines him is the aftermath of his passing, the number of people he awoke with his presence, the number of activists who were part of Harvey’s campaigns who have gone on to any number of significant lives. These people were touched by this time where they all came together politically and realized that they had power. They had a voice. They had representation, and isn’t that a basic thing to expect in this world? A voice in things?

Look, Van Sant’s a complicated filmmaker, but he’s a studio shark. He knows what he’s doing when he makes a film with a studio, and he knows how to do it for a cost they like. He can be political if he has to. This is a fact. All you have to do is look at the existence of his PSYCHO remake, which is absolutely Dali-smearing-shit-angels-crazy, to know that he is a smooth operator on the studio level. GOOD WILL HUNTING. FINDING FORRESTER. These are movies that make sense to a studio, and Van Sant can obviously deliver movie star movies. I really love the way he experiments from film to film, trying things out, honing a style, then abandoning it completely. He’s nimble. And MILK feels like a studio movie, slick and classically styled. There’s nothing experimental about the staging of the film or the shooting of it, and that’s fine. The emphasis here is on performance, and that’s where Van Sant really pays off as a choice. Say what you will about his movies, but he is great with actors. When I saw DRUGSTORE COWBOY, those performances were captured in such a personal, raw way that I felt like this guy was sort of in love with all of his cast, intensely. That depth of feeling is true of MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, MALA NOCHE, TO DIE FOR, PARANOID PARK. And here, he’s making this movie like he’s making a wish that he could live on Castro Street right in the middle of this, that he could be right there at Harvey’s elbow. That’s what the film does... it puts us right there with Harvey. We’re not asked to feel what he feels... he’s just one character in this sort of tapestry, with Franco and Emile Hirsch and Diego Luna and Victor Garber all doing strong supporting work, with familiar faces like Lucas Grabeel (familiar to anyone who has ever even seen the cover of a HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL film at the grocery store), Joseph Cross, Alison Pill, Denis O’Hare, Stephen Spinella, and JJ Abrams fave Kelvin Yu. Penn’s the center, the burning star that everything else orbits around.

And, goddamn, does that rub Dan White (Josh Brolin) the wrong way. Brolin continues his streak of strong performances with one of the best things he’s ever done. He plays Dan White as a clenched fist, a man who looks at Harvey and sees someone who has made every choice opposite from him, and it’s paying off. Wouldn’t that make you a little sick? If every single day, you worked face to face with someone who personified every value you rejected... and he was monstrously crazy successful?

The snapshot of big city politics in California in the ‘70s, and the way it lays out the Anita Bryant campaign and the way the battle over Proposition 6 becomes a flashpoint for the exercise of whatever political power Milk has built up by that point. He draws a line in the sand and says, “This is worth fighting over,” and what happens is a matter of public record. It was 30 years ago. And it was a more rational and human choice that was made then than was made in the same state earlier this month. California sent a message 30 years ago that was important, and then absolutely dropped the fucking ball this year. It’s impossible not to think about it as you sit through the film or think about the film if you live in California. I don’t think the rest of the country is necessarily feeling any ripples from what happened here, and certainly the rest of the world isn’t. To them, what they’ll see is Harvey Milk’s legacy of hope and action and promise and possibility. And Sean Penn turns out to be such an inspired choice for this role that I’m sort of shocked. I’ve written at length about my admiration for Penn and his work over the years. I was a fan from the start, from BAD BOYS and FAST TIMES, and watching him smile his way through so much of MILK, watching him really work a room, I was struck by how rare that is, and how much it transforms him. Harvey’s a guy who shares himself with everyone, and the toll that sort of personality takes on the relationships in his life is definitely part of the movie. But that’s also what made him so effective. That open quality. It’s Sean Penn’s secret weapon, since he’s almost always closely guarded. He’s played so many characters who are so dark, so imploded and tight, that this almost feels like it’s a different guy. Inspired. I mean that in every sense of the word. Technically, the film’s a knockout. Harris Savides is one of my favorite guys working. ZODIAC. BIRTH. ELEPHANT. THE GAME. Beautiful stuff. And for the first time in a long time, Danny Elfman’s score surprised me. This is one of those films that’s taken forever to make its way to the screen, that I’ve been hearing about almost as long as I’ve been in Los Angeles now, which is a loooooooooong time. I think this is about as good a fictional recreation of Harvey Milk as anyone could ask for. I think it will lead people to take a look at who he was, and at what he did and said and believed, and that can only be a good thing. Bill Groom’s production design never oversells the ‘70s thing, but it has a real authenticity. I visited my aunt in San Francisco during this time, and this is what I remember. Exactly.

And, look, this is personal for me, as I suspect it is for pretty much everybody to some degree. Like Harvey Milk says, you can’t look at your own family and not be affected by the issue of gay rights. When I was in my early teens, a family member was revealed as gay to me. The adults in the family knew, obviously, but I was just starting to notice things and pick up on things enough that it was explained to me. And... that was that. That’s how much my life changed or the fabric of reality changed. It was just something that was true about someone who we all loved, some detail of their life. I think the way my family handled it was pretty amazing in hindsight, because it was just normal. Nothing was a secret or a controversy. And it set a standard for me that has, hopefully, continued throughout my life, an acceptance of others that was simply part of the core values I was taught. Much of what Milk talks about in this film is how important it is for people to be honest about who they are, and not be closeted from their loved ones. The difference it makes, on both a micro and a macro level, is astonishing. That’s definitely important to remember as Prop. 8 remains a political football in the months ahead, but also beyond that, as that same fight plays out nationally, as the echoes of Harvey Milk’s anger turned to action continue to play out until they are no longer needed.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles