The great irony no one will speak of with respect to Gus Van Sant’s biopic of slain gay-rights leader Harvey Milk is that the last and most famous fight of Milk’s life was defeating Proposition 6, an indefensible 1978 California ballot initiative that would have made it the law of the land to hunt down and fire teachers suspected of being gay or just in favor of gay rights. And yet today, in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage through a Constitutional Amendment, the gay movement is doing to Prop. 8 supporters exactly what they found so abhorrent with respect to Prop. 6: hunting down and having fired those they disagree with.
So, yes, what you’re hearing is true; Milk is relevant with respect to what’s happening in California today, just not in the way you’re being led to believe or, no doubt, as the filmmaker may have intended.
What’s good about Milk is very good and enough to put the film over as a worthy way to spend a couple of hours. Most impressive is Sean Penn’s performance, which is just plain old Oscar-worthy, and his best since 1995’s Dead Man Walking. This is an actor who represents everything loathsome about the modern star: the bloated self-importance and mouthy attacks on what most of us hold dear, but Penn’s transformation washes away all of this – transcends it. He so completely loses himself as the 70’s activist you forget it’s Hugo Chavez’s good buddy up there.
And Harvey Milk is one fascinating character; as skittish as he is iron-willed, wary and fearful of others but so full of joy he can’t stay away. Penn embodies all of this and carries the entire load. The script’s not perfect and, considering the subject matter, pretty by-the-numbers, but the man himself as portrayed by the actor playing him helps overcome a decidedly weak second half.
Another element that falls under the “very good” is the film’s sense of time and place. Few of us know what life was like on San Francisco’s Castro Street during the 1970s but I’m betting the film gets it right. It’s a verisimilitude thing and Van Sant has his Transporter Machine perfectly calibrated, presses “ENGAGE,” and it’s off we go to the land of wild sideburns, bell bottoms, and cops dressed formally head to toe in wool.
We meet Harvey Milk in New York City on his 40th birthday. This is buttoned-down, in the closet, Goldwater Republican Harvey, but with a strong enough gaydar to single out Scott Smith (an excellent James Franco) as a likely sexual conquest on a subway platform. This leads to that, including a real connection between the two that will last — on and off — for the rest of the film, and before you know it Harvey’s self-actualized into a San Francisco hippie newly comfortable with his sexuality and ready to rumble for gay rights.
In the story department, Milk is most successful in its first half. Harvey’s middle-age crisis brings about a real transformation that’s both believable and interesting. Soon, he’s running for various political offices and doing better each time thanks to his charismatic personality and inexhaustible ability to organize others and promote himself. Van Sant does some impressive work making interesting the dit-dit required to birth a real political movement.
Unfortunately, it’s in the second half where things go astray. Milk gets involved with Jack Lira (Diego Luna), a pure basket case who drags down the story almost as much as he does Milk. Anyone who doesn’t see where this is headed after the first scene has never seen a biopic. The drama around whether or not Prop. 6 will pass also feels artificial and contrived. With the help of then Governor Reagan Prop. 6 was well on its way to defeat but the film uses a “glitch” in the precinct vote counting to make things look dire until the final second.
That “glitch” may have occurred in real life but it’s the kind of unbelievable thing that only works in real life because after it’s over we all look at each other and say, “No one would believe that in a movie.” No, we wouldn’t.
Politically, Milk deserves enormous credit for doing something the ridiculous Charlie Wilson’s War refused: Gives Ronald Reagan credit. In fact, twice Milk himself mentions Reagan’s opposition to Prop. 6 — an opposition many believe was the determinative factor in the ballot initiative’s defeat.
The tougher and more distasteful parts of the film — the ones that send we heterosexuals off to our mental happy place — involves the subject of gay sex. Because of our own friends and families, and with the increasing number of gay-themed films aimed at mainstream audiences, most of us are comfortable today when it comes to the examination of a committed partnership between same-sex couples, but promiscuity is a different story. And it’s not just the sex scenes. Both Harvey and his partner Scott make more than one offhand remark about their adventures in San Francisco’s gay bathhouses. Gay or straight, asking mainstream audiences to accept the notion of prowling for loveless, anonymous sex is never going to fly, and Milk seems to be saying that a part of gay tolerance requires an acceptance of this kind of “gay behavior.”
If that’s the bar, count me out.
The film also fails in its examination of Milk’s assassin, Dan White (Josh Brolin), a city supervisor who worked with Milk on the City Council. Obviously, White was a tortured and unhappy man driven by a last straw to gun down both Milk and the Mayor, but other than Van Sant’s rather cruel assumption that White was a conflicted homosexual, this character’s sudden arrival late in the film mixed with a silly operatic metaphor that comes from nowhere makes this the least interesting part of the film when it should and could’ve been an emotionally devastating tragedy for those of us invested in our lead character.
Thankfully Milk is mainly set up as an actor’s piece and thankfully all of the performances are outstanding. When it’s over you’ll have been glad for the opportunity to meet the charismatic and complicated Harvey and for a well designed trip in the wayback machine. If only the script had similarly risen.
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