Milk Movie Review

Milk

Movie Review

Milk is a truly infuriating film. I hate it with an intensity which I normally reserve for jazz and all things jazz related. That said, it is one of the best movies I have seen in the last twelve months and I think that, come Oscar night, Sean Penn will be walking away with a Best Actor statuette for his portrayal of the titular Harvey Milk.

My hatred of Milk is reserved not for the film itself but for the practices which it depicts. I had no idea how recently and how cruelly gay people were marginalized in America. I was aware walking in of the current state of affairs, but the magnitude of discrimination depicted in this movie was eye opening.

The film follows Gay Rights Activist and Politician Harvey Milk as he struggles to become the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US, and his later attempts to put in place and protect ground breaking equality legislation aimed at giving equal rights to gay people.

America's human rights record isn't squeaky clean, and it was tarnished long before the recent torture/interrogation technique semantics silliness. Eugenics, the ideology which stated that the human race could achieve greater purity through selective breeding, was in vogue in the early twentieth century. In 1907 Woodrow Wilson helped pass legislation in Indiana calling for the compulsory sterilisation of certain individuals and in 1927, just twelve years before the outbreak of World War II the US Supreme Court, in perhaps its most reprehensible decision, decided to uphold a Virginia law mandating the sterilisation of state mental institute patients. The bigotry depicted in Milk is more subtle and sly than anything that had gone before it, making it all the more insidious. How do you successfully argue with an opponent who assumes, through smiling lips, that God is on their side?

Sean Penn is captivating as Milk. Van Sant makes his character a gay every man. Early in the film, Harvey explains to his lover (James Franco) that he's forty and hasn't done anything worthwhile with his life yet, a sentiment which many would no doubt echo. This immediately and solidly puts the viewer in Milk's shoes, streaking the character and his actions with enduring empathy.

There’s more than one similarity between Milk and the epic Braveheart, if you can subsume the irony of putting the former next to the Mel Gibson directed latter. Both movies concern the exploits of men trying to free their people from oppression. Both protagonists are skilled and intellectual debaters, but are also aware that more direct action must sometimes be taken. In fact, the scenes involving hordes of gay men and women marching on city hall have the feel of the highland set piece battles placed in a more modern context.

Gus Van Sant's direction is structurally and visually stunning. The movie moves along at a fair clip and there are no stalls or fumbling transitions between the chapters in Milk's life. The actor's appear to have been chosen (ability aside) for their resemblance to their real life counterparts. There's a real sense of attention to detail and historic accuracy about the piece.

My two criticisms of the movie are James Franco and Josh Brolin's characters. Franco's performance is mature, but his character's arc is boring. The old "placing work ahead of relationships" storyline has been done to death and isn't given any special significance by the fact that it’s happening between two men. Brolin plays his character, fellow city supervisor Dan White, as though he is Milk's fiercest and most menacing rival, but the plot never places him in a position to present a tangible threat (ending aside). He just seems to amble his way from scene to scene like an angry child, his inclusion mandated by the fact that he plays a pivotal role at the movies end. Neither of these criticisms significantly hamper the film though, and I am sure they're in keeping with an accurate recounting of events.

The real danger once Milk is elected is posed by conservative groups spearheaded by Anita Bryant, attempting to push through anti-homosexual legislation. Bryant presents, through news footage, what is at the same time a chilling and infuriating antagonist. The wrong-headedness of her organisation makes the second act pulse. The fact that events in this film happened only five years before I was born made the vein in my left temple do similar.

Please go to see Milk, but if you do, make sure you're in a good mood beforehand. It costs a fortune to repair a projection screen that’s had a movie seat thrown through it.

8.5/10