Movie Review:
Milk
2008 / 2 hrs., 9 min. / R
Director: Gus Van Sant
Anyone who knows me will not even get past this first sentence without wondering if I can review a film like Milk without revealing a preconceived bias. Do my biblical beliefs on homosexuality affect my appreciation of a film about Harvey Milk’s crusade to correct a civil and societal wrong perpetrated on the homosexual community? Of course; and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I have long gotten over the idea that a film critic should not let his bias show; it’s when he’s covert about it that his journalism lacks honesty. If even the loftiest Roger Ebert can drop a star off a film’s score because it doesn’t line up with his liberal, irreligious view of life (and he has), surely this armchair pundit can do the same for a film that does not line up with my conservative, Christian view. And I’ll be honest about it right up front.
I have learned from past public embarrassment not to take a bio-pic at face value. I reviewed Finding Neverland on the assumption that it was reasonably factual, and a college student who had written major theses on J.M. Barrie had to correct me in an online forum. Inevitably, those responsible for producing real-life stories bend the facts for various artistic reasons, not the least of which is to show generosity toward the characters they wish to promote. But as I know nothing of Harvey Milk, indeed had not even heard of him until Milk’s advertising campaign began, I’ll go with the flow on this one.
In that spirit of deliberate naivete, then, I learned that Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) was murdered in 1978 by a very desperate Dan White (Josh Brolin). Who were they and why this was significant is the course of the movie, told by Milk into a cassette recorder in the justified fear that someone might try to assassinate him.
The film traces Milk’s life from his arrival in San Francisco around his fortieth birthday to his death about eight years later. During that time, the Castro district of the city was becoming a mecca for homosexuals, and Milk began to envision a world where gays would not have to live in fear of police brutality, job termination, and other discriminatory practices.
Bolstering support from the like-minded community, Milk became a candidate for office in San Francisco. It was not until the fourth attempt that he was actually elected, in 1977. For the following year, Milk worked to persuade his fellow city supervisors to pass bills extending basic human rights to the homosexual community. As the climax of his career, he was the rallying voice that unified a majority of Californians to defeat Proposition 6, an initiative that would require public schools to fire homosexual teachers.
Along the way, Milk seemed briefly to make a positive acquaintance with fellow city supervisor White, though White was clearly never totally comfortable with Milk. Whether it was Milk’s homosexuality that drove White to shoot both him and Mayor Moscone (Victor Garber) or whether it was White’s frustration regarding his financial and employment situation (a situation much of his own doing) is not made clear; though Brolin’s performance throughout the film would suggest both factors worked together, with the mayor’s refusal to reinstate White on the board of supervisors as the last straw.
At this point I’ve seen three Gus Van Sant films, and Milk is perhaps the most engaging of the three. His Good Will Hunting was, for me, an exercise in tedium unsuccessfully disguised as an inspiring story about finding greatness in humble places. And To Die For was interesting in a quirky way, but nothing I’d spend time watching again. As a piece of cinema, Milk is more focused and better-paced than either of those. I have my usual complaint about hand-held camera work, seen most overtly when Milk is rallying crowds in impromptu speeches on the streets of Castro; and some shots where the characters are so unusually framed as to be distracting. Why put the characters so low in the frame that it looks like a mistake instead of an artistic choice? Assuming the project was a typical artistic collaboration, such decisions fall first on the head of cinematographer Harris Savides, but why Van Sant gave his approval has me befuddled.
The script by Dustin Lance Black is subtle, sometimes witty, and otherwise strong for the film’s purpose. Black and Van Sant also successfully integrate a good portion of actual media from Milk’s life, to the extent that people like Anita Bryant, a spearhead in the effort to pass Proposition 6 and similar bills across the country, appears only in archived news footage and yet manages to upstage Josh Brolin in her role as a self-righteous hyper-angelic menace against homosexual rights. Apparently she was the Fred Phelps of her generation.
Sean Penn (Mystic River) has come a long way from his Fast Times at Ridgemont High – at least as far as his acting ability is concerned; his public appearances still remind me of a hot-tempered high school rebel slacker. I cannot compare Penn’s performance to the real Harvey Milk for accuracy, but his ability here to become someone else entirely is outstanding. Penn had help from the make-up and hair departments, but his whole character is transformed as well. Had I not known it was Penn, I don’t think I would have guessed. I’m not a Penn fan – most of his movies I’m simply not interested in – but here it would be accurate to say that he succeeded in that complete transformation of persona that is achieved by a rare few, most notably Daniel Day-Lewis (My Left Foot).
Penn is supported by a highly capable cast. Josh Brolin (No Country For Old Men) as Dan White finds a careful balance of a civil exterior with just enough edge to reveal that he’s subtly masking a disdain for Milk. Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild), James Franco (Spider-Man), Diego Luna (The Terminal), Alison Pill (Dan in Real Life), and Victor Garber (Titanic) join in as various associates, either politically or romantically or both. As an ensemble, they are well assembled.
The production team delivers quite an achievement in creating San Francisco of the 1970's. Often using the actual buildings where events happened, designer Bill Groom brings back all of the fashions and fabrics my generation ran from in a big hurry once we were old enough. I was only six when the 80's arrived, but the clothing and interior decorations of the film still had me cringing. (This is a compliment to the accurate recreation of the era’s style – I just don’t like the era’s style.)
All in all, the film as a work of art is of a fairly high quality. It is in the film’s motive and message that I have my sharpest disagreement.
As the film progresses, Milk increases his use of the word “hope”. He wants to give the gay community hope. He wants to give hope to young gays throughout the country feeling sidelined at best, ostracized and persecuted at worst. In the script his message of hope prevents one young man from committing suicide, and who knows how many others in real life.
But what hope could Milk really offer any of them? Nothing more than the American ideal of civil rights for the duration of their temporal existence. Milk’s own hope was sorely misplaced, and thus that message of hope sent out to the community was ultimately a very shallow one.
On the other side of the argument are people who only want to see homosexuals repressed. Anita Bryant, John Briggs (Denis O’Hare), and the straight portion of the Castro population are only interested in moralizing the country from the top down through restrictive laws. Dan White is willing to work with Milk when it advances the White agenda, but is tacitly uninterested in cooperating with Milk when it advances the Milk agenda.
Moralists should never be confused with biblical Christians. Moralists think that passing laws which reflect their morality is what makes a country good, even godly. If we can just cleanse all public life of any hint of homosexuality, God will smile upon us, they think.
Christians understand that this thinking is fruitless: Passing and enforcing laws does not make people godly; at best it only makes them act like it. We saw this in Iraq: When Saddam Hussein was deposed, barbershops were suddenly a booming industry, because an entire population of men were finally able to drop their fears about the government edict requiring beards and act in accordance with what they had been silently feeling at heart.
Like many of Hollywood’s modern pieces of propaganda, the film sets up a false either-or situation, where either we side with Milk’s message of hope, or we are accused of siding with the likes of Bryant, Briggs, and Company. But there is a third choice.
I do not advocate firing homosexuals, denying them housing, denying them jobs, denying them entry to businesses or running businesses of their own, relegating them to segregated portions of public or private establishments, and so on. Nor is the solution to shoot them, gas them, hang them, or any of history’s many other exercises of merciless cruelty – Such behavior is inexcusable and worthy of capital punishment itself. But neither can I endorse and encourage homosexuals to exercise their sinful desires. What I do believe is that their greatest need, as with every other person on the planet including myself, is to surrender to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
The Bible makes it clear that homosexuality is a symptom of an unredeemed soul; but unlike Fred Phelps and his “ministry” of damning homosexuals without any hope, the Bible reveals God’s offer of true hope to all mankind – a hope that makes the quest for temporal civil rights of any kind pale in comparison. For this one belief I have already been labeled a homophobe and a hater, despite the fact that I have nothing in common with actual bashers and haters, nor have any sense of phobia about homosexuals at all. I am simply one of the multitude of messengers bringing God’s true hope to all humanity.
For its cinematic quality, I give Milk high marks. But I cannot recommend the film as anything more than the sad portrait of the sad end of a man who had no true hope at all.
My Score: 7
