Milk got a lot of attention during the awards season. It deserved that attention on its merits, but some of the focus was likely also due to present-day events. In the November 2008 election, shortly before the national theatrical release of Milk, California voters passed Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state. A central focus of Milk is Harvey Milk’s successful campaign in 1978 to defeat a proposition that would have prohibited gay Californians from teaching in public schools. In that context, Milk becomes both a story of how far the gay rights movement has come and what barriers remain to be overcome.
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official in California. He won a seat on the San Francisco board of supervisors, after having lost a number of previous elections. Milk shows how he came to that point. The focus is on Harvey Milk the activist, but there are also glimpses (though much briefer) of Harvey Milk the man. When we first see him, he’s living a closeted life in New York, working in insurance. He picks up a cute guy (James Franco) in the subway on his 39th birthday and takes him home as his present to himself. It’s a relationship that sticks, and Franco’s character, Scott Smith, persuades Harvey that it’s time for a change of scenery and change of lifestyle. For gay men in the 1970s, that pretty much meant heading west to San Francisco.
Harvey and Scott move to the other coast, settle in, open a camera store and make friends. But, the growing gay scene in the Castro area also attracts a lot of hate, from both the police and macho straight guys looking to gay bash. Around the same time, Anita Bryant started making national headlines with her campaign to repeal a bill passed in Dade County, Florida, making discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (termed “sexual preference” at the time) illegal; from there, the anti-gay movement picked up steam in locations across the country. So, there’s plenty for Harvey and his group of friends to fight against.
The group makes its first headway, and realizes its power, when they join up with the Teamsters to boycott Coors beer. (Given how important that moment was, it would be nice if there was more context given as to why the Teamsters were upset with Coors, but that’s a small quibble.) From there, the movie traces Harvey’s failed campaigns, his eventual split with Scott, his relationship with Jack Lira, and how Harvey built the group of supporters and campaign workers (most notably Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones and Alison Pill as Anne Kronenberg) that eventually landed him in city hall.
At the same time Harvey was elected to the board of supervisors, an Irish Catholic firefighter named Dan White (Josh Brolin) was elected from a neighboring district. As portrayed in the film, White was in many ways the antithesis of Milk. A married family man from a conservative neighborhood, White was earnest but no match for Milk in charisma or speaking skills. And they certainly didn’t agree on the issues. In the run-up to the vote on the proposition, Milk and another supervisor, Carol Silver, sponsored a city ordinance outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation. It passed, with only White voting against. Soon after, the proposition also went down, with only White’s district voting in favor of it in the San Francisco area. White decided to resign his seat, then wanted to change his mind. When the mayor, George Moscone (played by Victor Garber) refused to allow him back, White shot and killed Moscone in the mayor’s office, walked down the hall, asked Milk to come into his (White’s) office, and shot and killed Milk as well.
Milk was directed by Gus Van Sant, and he does a fine job of crafting a history lesson that also engages. The film cuts back and forth between archival footage of Bryant on her crusade, Dianne Feinstein (who was heading the board of supervisors at the time) announcing Moscone’s and Milk’s murders, and Milk himself recording a memoir of sorts, audiotaped in case of just such an assassination happening. What’s doubtful is that Milk imagined his killer would be someone he’d worked with; one of his primary messages was the need for gay people to be out, because it’s much harder to misunderstand, let alone hate, someone once you know them. The death threats Milk got over the years (at least, those shown in the film) always suggested he’d be shot from a distance, while speaking at a rally or leading a protest march. The film suggests that White might have been a closeted gay man himself, although not much is done with that story line. (In real life, White was convicted of the relatively minor charge of manslaughter and served five years in prison, then moved back to San Francisco, where he killed himself a few years later.)
Penn makes Milk a believable, likeable character. It’s easy to see why people were drawn to him, and how he became such a leader. This is another one of those Penn performances where he becomes the character to such an extent that you aren’t thinking about it being Sean Penn there on the screen. The rest of the cast is also excellent, particularly Franco. (And, of course, that’s also what gave us that great comic moment at this year’s Oscars when Franco’s stoner character from Pineapple Express gets all emotional on Seth Rogen while watching a scene from Milk.)
There are only a few special features, but they’re certainly worth watching. One includes interviews with people who knew Harvey Milk, all of whom are portrayed in the film. It’s interesting not only for what they have to say, but also to see the real-life people you’ve just seen in the movie. A second featurette was shot during filming of some of the protest march scenes in the film and is very affecting because several of the people interviewed participated in the actual marches back in the 1970s. The third special feature includes many of the same people shown in the film talking about their work with Milk at the time and what it meant then and now.
The picture is 1080P high def for the film itself and 1080i high def for the featurettes. Shooting was done in San Francisco, including in Milk’s actual store (recreated for the film) and in San Francisco’s city hall. Feature audio is Dolby English DTS-HD 5.1, with the featurettes in Dolby Digital 2.0. Subtitle options are English, French and Spanish.