Best of Oscars, Part 3: Milk

Milk
Written by Dustin Lance Black, directed by Gus Van Sant, and starring Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin and James Franco.

(Mild story spoilers follow.)

In 1970, on the eve of his 40th birthday, Harvey Milk tells his soon-to-be boyfriend that he hasn’t accomplished anything yet in life. This will certainly change over the next 8 years, as Milk moves to San Francisco’s Castro district and works on becoming the first openly gay elected official in the US, championing civil rights in a time when American gay rights were virtually non-existent. The biopic Milk documents Harvey’s rise: from the early days when he was simply “the mayor of Castro Street”, through several elections, his eventual appointment as one of 11 San Francisco city supervisors, to his untimely death in 1978.

Harvey Milk’s life is very well documented, so let’s focus on the movie instead. I’d heard of Milk way before the movie was ever advertised, when my friend (and then co-worker) Wolfi took the day off to work as an extra in the film’s crowd scenes that were being shot in San Francisco. To be honest, I didn’t know anything about Harvey Milk or what he stood for until I watched this movie. As I expected, Milk educated me very well in that regard and gave me a lot of appreciation for the history of the American gay rights movement.

What I didn’t expect was how much fun I’d have watching Milk. For a movie that deals with such a serious subject matter, it’s genuinely entertaining. Easy to get into, dramatic in all the required places, fun in others – and it gets its message across. No matter how hard the circumstances, no matter how (occasionally) bleak the times – it was Harvey Milk’s positive outlook on life that allowed him to achieve what he achieved, and the positive example that he set comes across in the movie. Milk is a celebration of our commonalities and differences, teaching us lessons on bigotry that we’d all do well to remember.

If I measure biopics by whether they needed or didn’t need to be made, Milk certainly ranks in the first category. It provides background and perspective on a topic that is all too topical even today, and does so in a reaffirming manner. You may remember the “No Milk For Cinemark” campaign, boycotting the theater chain because its CEO had made the maximum allowed contribution to support Prop 8 before last November’s elections. We watched Milk in Sonoma’s historic Sebastiani Theater and let me tell you – after letting Milk teach me about the relevance of  Briggs Initiative, I would have felt extremely foolish if we had caved in and seen this movie at a local Century Theaters instead. Most of California seems to regret the results of Prop 8 now, which spoiled an otherwise positive election night last November – maybe we wouldn’t have these regrets if everybody had seen Milk before casting their vote.

“Best Picture Nominee” Worthiness: 4/5. Milk is well-written, well-acted (Sean Penn is terrific as always, but many of the supporting actors put on sometimes unexpectedly great performances as well), and it’s as fun to watch as a movie of this nature can be. Just as importantly, Milk is a timely reminder of how bigotry is still alive in America. Certainly a worthy contended for the Best Picture award this year.

Read the series introduction
Part 1: The Reader
Part 2: Slumdog Millionaire