MILK

Gus Van Sant, after working primarily in an avant-garde style for the past five years or so, returns to a more traditional filmmaking mode with Milk and scores a bulls-eye with this biopic based on the last years of martyred San Francisco supervisor and gay rights activist Harvey Milk (1930—1978). Van Sant is more than ably assisted by Dustin Lance Black’s solid original screenplay and Sean Penn’s exciting performance as Harvey Milk. Penn doesn’t merely act the character—he becomes the man. It’s a remarkable transformation.

Milk charts the last eight years of Harvey Milk’s life. While living in New York City, he turns 40. Looking for more purpose, Milk and his lover Scott Smith (James Franco) relocate to San Francisco, where they found a small business, Castro Camera, in the heart of a working-class neighborhood that was soon to become a haven for gay people from around the country. With his beloved Castro neighborhood and beautiful city empowering him, Milk surprises Scott and himself by becoming an outspoken agent for change. He seeks equal rights and opportunities for all, and his great love for the city and its people brings him backing from young and old, straight and gay alike—at a time when prejudice and violence against gays was openly accepted as the norm.

After several unsuccessful attempts at running for public office, he’s finally elected supervisor for the newly zoned District 5 (encompassing the Haight and Castro districts). Milk serves San Francisco well. While lobbying for a citywide ordinance protecting people from being fired because of their orientation—and rallying support against a proposed statewide referendum to fire gay schoolteachers and their supporters--he realizes that this fight against Proposition 6 represents a pivotal precipice for the gay-rights movement. At the same time, the political agendas of Milk and those of another newly elected supervisor, Dan White (Josh Brolin), increasingly diverge and their personal destinies tragically converge.

Milk opened across the country on November 26, 2008, in limited release, thirty years to the week of Milk and Mayor Moscone’s assassination by a disgruntled Dan White who had recently resigned his supervisor post and was hoping to be reinstated. Even if you’re not familiar with Milk’s story or San Francisco’s history, knowing this information is not a spoiler as early in the film we see in archival footage a shaken Dianne Feinstein (who was then supervisor board president, soon to become mayor) announce White’s deed to the press and to the world. The effective and moving use of archival footage blended with new footage throughout this film is extraordinarily well done; sometimes you don’t know if the footage is new or old. There was one scene that I thought was archival and then into the frame comes Emile Hirsch (portraying Milk’s young friend Cleve Jones) standing on a corner. Footage of the impressively large, spontaneous candlelight vigil from Rob Epstein’s 1984 Academy Award-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, an excellent companion piece to this film, is used seamlessly along with footage of the vigil encompassing actors from Milk.

The cast and the casting of this film is truly superb, one of the best ensembles of the year. The main players are all worth mentioning: Sean Penn (Harvey Milk), James Franco (Scott Smith), Emile Hirsch (Cleve Jones), Josh Brolin (Dan White), Diego Luna (Jack Lira), Alison Pill (Anne Kronenberg), Victor Garber (Mayor George Moscone), Denis O’Hare (John Briggs), Joseph Cross (Dick Pabich), Stephen Spinella (Rick Stokes), Lucas Grabeel (Danny Nicoletta), Brandon Boyce (Jim Rivaldo), Zvi Howard Rosenman (David Goodstein), Kelvin Yu (Michael Wong), and Jeff Koons (Art Agnos).

Van Sant’s chief collaborators also deserve special praise. Harris Savides’ cinematography, Bill Groom’s production design, Danny Elfman’s score, and Elliot Graham’s editing all point this film toward being one of the year’s best. In closing, Reyhan Harmanci writing for the San Francisco Chronicle as Milk opened in the film’s hometown setting posited: “In the wake of national protests and boycotts over California voters’ passage of Proposition 8—which bans same-sex marriage—a question arises: Can the dramatized Milk make the same kind of political impact as his real-life counterpart? At the very least, many activists and media experts say, Milk has the potential to engage the politically inert and spark meaningful conversations about gay rights.”

                                                                  Jim Baldassare

Photo credit: Jim Baldassare

Photo of 575 Castro Street, San Francisco, July 2008. Currently houses the upscale gift store Given. Was the site of Harvey's Castro Camera. Also used as the location in Gus Van Sant's film Milk. Above the shop was Milk's apartment. In the apartment's window, through the tree branches, you can see a photo cut out of Milk staring out the window. On his t-shirt it says: "You Gotta Give 'Em Hope."