Milk - Hagiography | Trash Cinema Club

Mar

6

Milk - Hagiography

≡ Category: Drama, Mainstream, Movie Reviews By Country, United States, Worth A Look |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Drama/ Mainstream
Director: Gus Van Sant
Year: 2008

Rating:

WORTH A LOOK

I’ve got to be honest. Even though I enjoyed Milk, it’s not a very good movie.

Before you get your panties in a bunch, let me explain why.

First of all, I’ve got to acknowledge that there’s a lot of good acting in Milk. Sean Penn is phenomenal, even more so than it seems. Some wags say that Penn earned his Academy Award for smiling alot, but that’s not true. Penn essentially becomes a joyful man. His Milk is not merely a bundle of mannerisms. Sure, his body language is very specific, but it seems to proceed from the inside out instead of merely being an affectation. On a less exalted level, Emile Hirsch, James Franco, Denis O’Hare are also very effective in their roles. Finally, Josh Brolin is terrific as Dan White. He captures a vulnerable man who is unprepared to deal with the cutthroat world of San Francisco politics.

And to give some credit to screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, he resists the temptation to paint Dan White as a cartoonish, gay-hating cretin. His portrait of Dan White is properly complex, even sympathetic. Unfortunately, Black doesn’t do as well with Milk himself.

When Milk ruthlessly pulls a power play to prevent Dan White from being reinstated as a City Supervisor after he resigns, it doesn’t make much sense in the context of the character we’ve seen up until then. In reality, Harvey Milk was a ruthless politician who did betray Dan White. His personal life was also far messier than Black and director Gus Van Sant are willing to admit. Yes, Harvey Milk was a hero, he was brave and determined, but he could also be a sonofabitch.

In that way, Milk is very conventional, painting its subject in the standard Hollywood colors. It verges on hagiography. There was nothing cuddly about Harvey Milk. Director Gus Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black insist on Milk’s sainthood to such an extent that it damages Sean Penn’s brilliant performance. That’s a shame.

Another problem is that Black’s dramaturgy is flabby. There are too many ungainly pauses, and too much of the time, events happen in a cute Hollywood way that trivialize the enormity and difficulty of what Harvey Milk accomplished.

Still, with all of the flaws of Milk, it does provide a major public service. For those who are were unaware (that would include me), gay people in the mid-70s were brutally oppressed. Yes, I knew that there was the ever-present specter of gay bashing, and that the cops weren’t much interested in prosecuting these crimes. But what I didn’t know is that the religious right, spearheaded by orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant, was attempting to reverse civil rights legislation for homosexuals and that they were in fact succeeding. Gays were in a desperate fight for survival and Dustin Lance Black’s script makes this frighteningly clear. Proposition 6, if passed, would have called for all gay schoolteachers in California to be fired, as well as anyone who supported them. Harvey Milk was in the center of the fight to defeat this proposition. His strategy was to have gay people come out to their families, friends and employers. Why? Because it’s very difficult to dismiss gay people as a group of deviants if you happen to know some personally.

My Indonesian wife is a good case in point. She has an evangelical Christian background, and before she came to this country, she was very prejudiced against gay people. But after she got here, she made friends with a couple of gay folks, and after that, she stopped believing it was a lifestyle choice and all that other crap that the religious right likes to claim.

Surely Gus Van Sant knows that the story of Harvey Milk is more complex and problematic than what he has presented on the screen. My guess is that he felt that since there was only going to be one movie about Harvey Milk, it was best to portray him and his struggles in the most heroic light possible, for propagandistic purposes. He’s got a point. What with the ascent of the religious right in national politics and the AIDs epidemic, the gay civil rights movement needs all the help it can get.

I am sympathetic to Gus Van Sant’s aims, but to me, his responsibility is as a filmmaker first and a gay man second (although I’m sure he wouldn’t agree). I wish Van Sant had given us a warts and all portrayal of Milk, but this is certainly better than nothing.