Sean Penn plays slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk. Photo: Focus Features. Below: A still from ‘The Times of Harvey Milk.’ Photo courtesy of Margaret Herrick Library.
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By Ryan Lee
Sunday, November 23, 2008
DURING THE LAST DECADE of his life, Harvey Milk had an almost pathological urge to rescue gay people. Whether closeted school teachers or young street trade, particularly the latter, Milk was obsessed with finding gay people who felt trapped in the darkest corners of their beings, and showing them that happiness and freedom were alternative options to how they were living.
Three decades after Milk was executed at point-blank range by a political rival in San Francisco’s City Hall, his mission is revived in Gus Van Sant’s new biopic, “Milk,” which opened Wednesday in Washington.
The wisdom and passion Milk (Sean Penn) offers in this movie comes at an ideal time for gay men and lesbians in desperate need of such mentorship. However, the movie falls far short of capturing the power of Milk’s life-and-death story, with the credits rolling before the most illustrative element of Milk’s tragedy is shared with viewers.
That’s because “Milk” is as much a political biography as it is a message for gay rights, with Van Sant and writer Dustin Lance Black devoting an overwhelming portion of the film to Milk’s series of political campaigns, the first three of which he lost.
While such a focus might make sense when telling the story of one of America’s first openly gay elected officials, the drama and impact of Milk’s tale did not center on a handful of campaigns for public office.
Less than a year after being elected as a San Francisco city supervisor, the equivalent of a city council member, Milk was assassinated by a fellow supervisor, Dan White (Josh Brolin). The movie and Brolin do a fine job revealing White’s conservative and anti-gay indignation; but within the context of the story told in “Milk,” his actions could easily be seen as a political killing, rather than an anti-gay hate crime, particularly since White also murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, who was straight.
And by ending the movie on the night of the murders, Van Sant leaves out the unambiguously homophobic assault on Milk’s legacy: when a conservative San Francisco jury believed that the killings were triggered by White overdosing on junk food and found White guilty of manslaughter instead of premeditated murder.
A man uses nine bullets to kill two elected officials—a mayor and a city supervisor, each with multiple gunshots to the head—and is sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison, serving only five. Such an injustice would have never occurred were it not for the jury’s anti-gay bias and many observers believe White would have died in an electric chair if he had killed only Moscone.
As admirable as the story and acting in “Milk” are, it’s truly a shame that the project failed to include the episode that best illustrated why Harvey Milk wanted to change the world.
THE MOVIE EFFECTIVELY CAPTURES the homophobia of Milk’s time in other ways, like the opening sequence of vintage footage of police raids on gay bars. The visual evidence of the outright persecution that gay people lived under until the last quarter century is harrowing — and useful to both young gay people who don't know the history and opponents of gay rights who insist the oppression we fight is imaginary or exaggerated.
Archival news footage is also used to re-create the legend of Anita Bryant, the former Miss America/gospel singer/orange juice spokesperson who led a national campaign to “Save Our Children” from the evil of equal rights for homosexuals. Always good for a campy laugh, Bryant’s appearance is also a powerful reminder of the persistence of gay rights opponents and how they continue to recycle the same arguments today.
“Milk” shows that the American public has an insatiable appetite to vote away gay rights, which continues in constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. The scenes from ballot initiatives during the 1970s should be sobering to those who believe that people are currently voting against gay rights because of the term “marriage” or because we asked for “too much, too fast.”
Sadly, Milk’s wisdom about how to fight these measures has been completely lost on gay rights organizations. When facing a statewide referendum to bar gay men and lesbians from being schoolteachers, Milk rejects the strategy proposed by conservative gay leaders to avoid making the campaign a "gay" issue, but rather a question about "human rights."
“This is shit,” Milk fumes when activists show him a flier opposing the schoolteacher initiative that doesn’t include the word gay. “It’s a coward’s response to a dangerous threat.
“People need to know who’s affected,” Milk says before successfully leading the campaign to defeat the gay teacher ban.
From Georgia to California, we have seen the so-called “de-gaying” of campaigns in fights against anti-gay marriage amendments, where organizers go to great lengths to avoid mentioning anything gay, lest they alienate moderate voters. And in the passage of all of these amendments, we see how successful this strategy has been.
A conservative Republican for four-fifths of his life, Milk didn’t discover discrimination until his lack of equality as a gay man became obvious. But he quickly realized that all underrepresented groups — women, blacks, gays, immigrants, union laborers, seniors — need to work together, another timely lesson for the gay rights movement.
PENN BREATHES PASSIONATE LIFE back into Milk’s image in a stunning performance. The authenticity of Penn’s portrayal allows Milk’s insight and eloquence to shine through.
Listening to Milk’s words and worldview, it’s hard not to see similarities to Barack Obama’s rhetoric of hope. Here again, the movie offers a poignant lesson that might be usefully applied to the next president.
“Milk” is a wholly human portrait of Harvey Bernard Milk, whose life has been romanticized to the point where he is often incorrectly credited as being America’s first openly gay elected official. He was not, nor was he perfect or angelic.
He turned street tricks, age notwithstanding; a lover points out that he was a hypocrite; for all of his lofty idealism, Milk was as ruthless a politician as Mayor Daley or Boss Tweed; and his political shrewdness exacted a tremendous toll on his relationships.
At one point, Milk asks an anti-gay political rival, “How many lives will you destroy in your lust for power?” A couple of Milk’s lovers could have asked him the same thing.
Despite his flaws, Milk did everything he could, including sacrifice his life, to make this world more livable for his gay brothers and sisters. And despite its shortcomings, “Milk” should be celebrated for bringing to the masses the story of a tragically overlooked hero.
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