THE STORY – In 1972, Harvey Milk and his then-lover Scott Smith leave New York for San Francisco, with Milk determined to accomplish something meaningful in his life. Settling in the Castro District, he opens a camera shop and helps transform the area into a mecca for gays and lesbians. In 1977, he becomes the nation’s first openly gay man elected to a notable public office when he wins a seat on the Board of Supervisors. The following year, Dan White kills Milk in cold blood.
THE CAST – Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna, James Franco & Allison Pill
THE TEAM – Gus Van Sant (Director) & Dustin Lance Black (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 128 Minutes
In order to talk about Gus Van Sant’s 2008 feature “Milk,” we must first start with a bit of history. Not about the real-life story of Harvey Milk, the first openly homosexual politician ever elected to public office (and also, not coincidentally, the first to be assassinated), but of the times surrounding the film’s release in late 2008. California, the very state in which Milk had tirelessly worked to advance the cause of gay rights, found itself in the center of a national firestorm thanks to the furor over Proposition 8. Proposition 8, if passed, would add language to the state’s constitution that only marriages between opposite-sex couples are valid in the state. Same-sex marriage had only been officially recognized in the US for four years in only one state (thanks, Massachusetts), and wouldn’t be recognized at the federal level for another seven years. While Barack Obama won the Presidency in November, a landmark moment for the civil rights movement, the citizens of California voted in favor of Prop 8 by a margin of under 5 percentage points. To say that same-sex marriage advocates were in a complicated place would be underselling it.
Enter New Queer Cinema icon, Gus Van Sant. The indie filmmaking legend had previously been attached to another biopic of Milk in the ‘90s, meant to star Robin Williams, but left the project due to creative differences. After directing “Good Will Hunting” to boffo box office and Academy Awards success, Van Sant cashed in his blank check to helm a “shot-for-shot” remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”. After that flopped, he made amends to Hollywood with the generic “Finding Forrester” before retreating back to independent cinema. After his loosely-scripted, experimental “Death Trilogy” of “Gerry,” the Palme d’Or-winning “Elephant,” and “Last Days,” in the early ‘00s, Van Sant adapted the novel “Paranoid Park” with a cast of mostly non-actors. All received varying levels of critical acclaim, but barely made an impression on audiences. Sean Penn, the Oscar winner (for 2003’s “Mystic River”) chosen to play Milk, was the biggest star he’d worked with since Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in “Gerry.” This was no experimental walk in the desert, though; Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay for “Milk” was the most conventional thing Van Sant had worked on in years, an audience-friendly crowd-pleaser filled with stirring speeches and emotional appeals to common decency. By the time the film was finally released around Thanksgiving, though, it became much more than just another biopic. Despite distributor Focus Features’ attempts to stay above the political fray, the parallels between the film’s story and the current moment were all too obvious and all too potent. Once again, thirty years after his death, Harvey Milk was here to recruit you, and boy, did we need him.
Presented as a story Harvey Milk records for posterity in the event of his assassination, “Milk” tells the story of his life from 1970 onwards, beginning on the eve of his fortieth birthday. When he first hits on Scott Smith (James Franco), the younger man rebuffs the strait-laced insurance salesman. Harvey’s boyish charm and inability to take “no” for an answer eventually win Scott over, and by the end of the night, it’s clear that they’re meant for each other. Before long, Harvey had grown out his hair and moved with Scott to San Francisco, where the Kinsey Institute believed there were more gay people per capita than anywhere else in America. Frustrated by local bigots and a city police force that treated his people like dirt, Harvey decides to run for local office as a city supervisor. The local gay political establishment didn’t like the fact that he was an outsider, but after several years of building his business, Castro Camera, and building up his community through coalitions with the Teamsters and other minority groups, he finally won a seat in government in 1977, the first year in which each district voted for its own supervisors. As the first openly gay man elected to office, Harvey tries to make a coalition in the government, reaching out to conservative Dan White (Josh Brolin), a former firefighter and policeman who asks for Harvey’s support in killing a psychiatric hospital in his district in exchange for supporting Milk’s citywide gay rights ordinance. When Harvey votes for the hospital, White feels betrayed. Harvey and his crew of activists have enough on their hands fighting Proposition 6, a statewide ballot initiative championed by former beauty queen and Florida Orange Juice spokesperson Anita Bryant that sought to ban homosexuals from working in public schools. As Harvey fights for his community, Dan tries to fight for himself and his dignity, trying to make something of his political career. But the two men are on a collision course that cannot be changed.
Van Sant and his team of talented craftspeople recreate the Castro district of Milk’s day with loving attention to detail. Digging into the less disco-fabulous side of the seventies, costume designer Danny Glicker and production designer Bill Groom capture the lives of their working-class subjects with all the vibrancy and grit that defined the era. The after-hours political meetings at Castro Camera hum with the electricity of passionate people coming together to fight for what they believe in, and the halls of government feel appropriately stately and overly polished in comparison. Authenticity seems to have been the guiding principle here, and Van Sant pushes it as hard as he can right from the opening montage of archival newspaper clippings and television footage. Cinematographer Harris Savides, in particular, makes absolute magic out of Van Sant’s heady ideas. The use of handheld cameras to place you among the crowds of rally goers and protesters works well, but the way Dan White is constantly pushed to the edges of the frame, made to look small and out of place, is brilliant, part of a deliciously sly mean streak towards the story’s real-life villains that includes denying Anita Bryant the glory of having an actress being beloved for playing her onscreen. No, in “Milk,” Anita Bryant plays herself, and she’s just about the scariest villain in any 2008 film, smiling and singing away as she cheerfully ruins people’s livelihoods for no reason other than her own deification. The film’s blend of archival footage and new footage plays seamlessly, at points nearly erasing the line between real events and their cinematic recreations. It’s an act of mythmaking Harvey himself would have loved, turning him into an even larger-than-life figure than he already was, thanks to Penn’s monumental performance.
Despite some appearances on sitcoms taking the piss out of himself, Sean Penn has never been known for his joy and lightness as an actor. His filmography was full of heavy dramas in which he plays ultra-serious characters dealing with weighty matters. His Oscar-winning performance in “Mystic River” just five years before was a typical Sean Penn performance: As an ex-con whose daughter is found dead, Penn tortures himself throughout, wailing in pain and lashing out in anger. His performance in “Milk” sees him diving just as deep into the character as always, but to completely different ends. Harvey Milk radiated positive energy even when he was incredibly angry about the state of the world, and Penn, a long-time political activist himself, took Harvey’s words, “you gotta give ‘em hope,” to heart for his performance. Penn has never been this radiant onscreen, before or since, making it a standout in his filmography, completely unlike anything else he’s done. The scenes of Milk recording his story, seriously monologuing into a tape recorder, are the type of thing we expect from Penn; the frisky way he slaps Franco’s ass and laughs, “I had to do it,” while claiming sanctuary, are not. Of course, he delivers in the moments of big emotional grandstanding, but in the quieter moments, Penn feels downright revelatory, displaying a grace and vulnerability that draw you to him, just as people in real life were drawn to Harvey. It almost feels like in the process of preparing for this role, Penn changed his soul a bit, becoming a sunnier, more joyful person.
Another part of Van Sant’s commitment to authenticity is the film’s ensemble. As a community organizer, Harvey Milk understood how important each individual was to the collective whole, and Van Sant does the same, creating space for his actors to play and recreate the vibe of this specific place and time. The protests feel urgent, the desperation at setbacks is palpable, and the energy between all the cast members is downright electric, with all of them turning in their best work, or at least near it. Franco’s undeniable chemistry with Penn reveals the sensitivity that made him such a standout in his early career. His genuine sweetness cuts through even the intervening twenty years of increasingly off-putting behavior to remind you that the man actually has talent. Brolin is eerily effective as Dan White, perfectly capturing the pressure placed on men to conform to heteronormative standards and how maintaining a “respectable” image can eat you up from the inside. As the most prominent of Milk’s merry band of queer activists, Emile Hirsch and Allison Pill breathe vivid life into Cleve Jones and Anne Kronenberg, enlivening every scene with a take-no-prisoners attitude and sly sense of humor. Diego Luna, as Harvey’s post-Scott boyfriend Jack Lira, does the best he can with the film’s most frustratingly written role, effectively portraying his wild mood swings that feel more narratively convenient than based in character. Van Sant even makes some cheeky casting decisions, taking the opportunity to cast two of the most prominent real-life politicians in the film, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and infamously homophobic State Senator John Briggs, with out gay actors Victor Garber and Denis O’Hare, respectively. The entire cast is note-perfect, completing Van Sant’s vision of the Castro in the ‘70s with energetic flair and emotional openness.
Watching “Milk” nearly twenty years later can be difficult. The baggage that Penn, Franco, and Hirsch (to start with) have accumulated over the years poses a barrier to entry for many. Their performances, however, erase that barrier completely in just a few minutes, a testament to not just their skills as performers but to Black’s screenplay, which is littered with memorable lines for every character. Black’s deep personal connection to the material, having grown up Mormon and ashamed of his sexuality, proves to be both a help and a hindrance. While the film overall is grounded enough that its sentimentality doesn’t tip over into manipulative tear-jerking, there are two scenes featuring phone calls from a wheelchair-bound gay teenager that are so brazenly emotionally manipulative that they seem to be from a different film altogether. However, while Black’s sentimentality may have gotten the better of him slightly, the words Harvey says to him, and Penn’s delivery of them, hold such meaningful power for so many young queer people that it’s hard to deny them in the moment. More interesting is Black’s over-reliance on Rob Epstein’s seminal, Oscar-winning 1984 documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk” for the film’s structure. Pulling dialogue from Harvey’s rallies and other public appearances adds to the film’s considerable authenticity, but following the documentary’s structure this closely (even using much of the same archival footage) makes the film feel like an adaptation of the documentary instead of an original film with a point of view all its own.
To the extent that the film has a point of view, it’s all because of Van Sant. “Milk” represents the most potent mixture of his arthouse and mainstream sensibilities, taking the conventional biopic form of the screenplay and invigorating it with smartly judged visual ideas and no small amount of cinematic magic. Even twenty years later, the film has lost none of its power, and not just because history seems to be repeating itself yet again with an administration that seems hellbent on walking back every civil rights advancement of the past half-century. “Milk” stands as a testament to the collective power of a community that stands up and fights for what’s right, to the unending fight of grassroots activists who give everything for a movement larger than themselves. It’s a film that has the power to inspire many to pick up Harvey Milk’s mantle. In short, it’s a film we need now more than ever.
