Milk (2008)

“His life changed history. His courage changed lives.”

Milk

In 1972, Harvey Milk moves from New York City to San Francisco and becomes a gay activist in the Castro district of San Francisco. As Milk becomes a prominent gay rights activist, his platform gradually turns to political activism as Milk realizes that he can be a more powerful and effective voice for the gay community as a politician, and rallies the San Francisco gay community. Despite several setbacks, Milk becomes the first openly gay man in the United States to be elected to political office in 1977, as a supervisor for San Francisco. The movie chronicles Milk’s journey as an activist, and how his struggles with a national anti-gay Save the Children movement, as well as issues he encounters with a conservative fellow politician, Dan White.

I knew little about the story of Harvey Milk besides the fact that he was the first openly gay man elected to political office, and that he resided in San Francisco. As Sean Penn had won the Best Actor Oscar for his role as Harvey Milk, I expected an excellent performance, and I knew James Franco also had an important role, which made me incredibly happy as I’m a James Franco fan. I left the theater at the end of the movie with plenty of food for thought. Milk is a very good movie, and it definitely gets you thinking about how things have and haven’t changed in terms of gay rights since Milk was in office.

The rest of this post is my opinion about the movie and contains spoilers.

I thought Sean Penn’s portrayal of Harvey Milk was fantastic. He was perfect, and got everything spot-on, down to the little mannerisms, and he had such an approachable quality that was integral to a character like Milk. James Franco was brilliant too, as was Josh Brolin as Dan White. I was very glad to see there was a female character among all of these leading men, and Alison Pill made quite the impression as Anne Kronenberg, a member of Milk’s staff, but I think it was Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch) that really made the movie for me.

I cannot believe that lawyers tried to argue that Dan White had a chemical imbalance in his brain caused by his junk food diet that led him to kill both Milk and George Moscone. Like, really. The twinkie defense may have successfully persuaded the jury to lower White’s charges from premeditated murder to voluntary manslaughter¹, but the guy still committed two murders. Seriously?!

Overall Rating: 8.5/10

1. This verdict led to the White Night Riots as citizens of San Francisco’s LGBT community were outraged. [↩]

Tags: movies