Milk (2008)
Focus Features
Director: Gus Van Sant
Writer: Dustin Lance Black
Sean Penn, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsch, Allison Pill, Diego Luna, Dennis O’Hare, Victor Garber.
Cameos by Cleve Jones, Carol Ruth Silver, Tom Ammiano, others.
129 minutes
The acclaimed Oscar winner, already considered a classic less than six months after its release, comes to DVD. It’s an important release. In spite of how well received it was (two Oscars for starters) many smaller, conservative areas refused to play the film.
But you can’t silence the truth. As a DVD release, this superb, true life drama is now available to all who wish to view it.
Penn’s Best Actor award is well deserved: The actor not only resembles Harvey Milk, he channels the assassinated gay politician’s spirit. Josh Brolin, who plays the possibly closeted and mentally ill killer Dan White, also gets kudos for his work. Like Penn, Brolin resembles his real-life counterpart, and effectively conveys the tormented soul who was driven to an act of unspeakable evil by his own failures.
There’s a very hard, timely lesson to learn in Milk. It’s now believed that California’s Proposition 8 (the gay-marriage ban) and similar measures in other states, passed this past Election Day because of the LGBT’s community’s current lack of unity. And because the No On 8 campaign’s refused to honestly portray LGBT families in its ads. Three decades ago, a unified, proud community led by Harvey Milk, easily defeated Prop 6, which sought to deny LGBT teachers their jobs. There’s a hard lesson to be learned when we see what a community can accomplish when it works together and listens to its own.
Milk is the best kind of movie: at two hours plus, it feels too short. It’s brilliant on every level, in particular it’s meticulous art decoration. San Francisco’s Castro Street is effectively dressed up to look exactly as it was during the 1970s — right down to the storefronts and the colors gracing the Castro Theatre marquee.
Milk is an epic in the annals of gay cinema.
It has a cast of thousands — some of the grand shots of Milk’s supporters are on a scale with Gone With the Wind! We’ve never seen such sweep in a gay independent film!
Look for Harvey Milk’s real-life surviving friends in cameos: Emile Hirsch plays Cleve Jones, but the real Jones is seen applauding while Penn as Milk speaks on the steps of San Francisco City Hall. Also look for California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano playing a younger version of himself as he boos State Senator John Briggs (Dennis O’Hare), the right-wing homophobe who authored
Prop 6.
DVD extras include wonderful behind the scenes footage of Milk’s production in the Castro, and interviews with Cleve Jones, Carol Ruth Silver (the San Francisco supervisor who, with Milk, co-authored the city’s 1978 gay-rights ordinance) and other surviving friends.
BRAVO!!!!!!
Note: Starting in April, the Castro Theatre will launch Milk Mondays, weekly screenings of the film so that visitors to San Francisco can see Milk “where it all happened.” Info will be posted shortly at www.CastroTheatre.com
David Alex Nahmod lives in San Francisco. He does film reviews and celebrity interviews for a variety of publications, and has seen Milk at the Castro Theatre twice. Visit him at: www.DavidsOpenForum.Blogspot.com
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