Review - Milk

There are some moments in history when social and geographical forces come together to produce a movement that fascinates long after it has past. I’m talking about the black Civil Rights Movement in the South or Swinging London. These are so fixed in our collective pop culture brain that the story of anyone caught up in events will usually make an interesting basis for a film. San Francisco had two of these moments in a row. In the 60s, the hippies flooded in and Haight-Ashbury became the world centre of being free. In the 70s, the gay community asserted itself and built a public identity in the Castro district.

Plenty of films have been made about the first moment (indeed, plenty were made at the time), but not many deal with the second one. Milk makes up for that by telling the story of the self-proclaimed ‘Mayor of Castro’ and the great hero of gay rights, Harvey Milk (Sean Penn). Charting his rise from 40-year-old drop out, to unsuccessful political candidate, to public office and to death, it gives a low-key but extremely poignant portrait of a man fighting for his cause despite the risks.

This almost documentary-style film paints a vivid and vibrant picture of life in the Castro, but also shows the level of prejudice surrounding its inhabitants. This is a community under siege from the police and politicians. It is amazing now to think of the laws that were passed across America in the 1970s legalising discrimination against gay people, and unbelievable that they were nearly passed in California. The danger feels very real, as we see the damage, both physical and mental, that living a lie can produce. The film is at its most effective when we see glimpses of those suffering in small towns, and it is these people that Milk wants to rescue.

Penn’s portrayal of Harvey is perfect, and he creates a living, breathing person. Lightly effeminate, funny (not something that seems to come naturally to the actor), angry, aching, it is about as far away from a caricature as you can get and certainly deserves its Oscar nomination. Milk is not simple hagiography, though. Harvey is not Ghandi or Martin Luther King; he fought back, happy to play the political game and scratch other people’s backs so his own could be scratched.

The people in the character’s orbit are all wonderfully played by people with singularly awful haircuts. As previously mentioned, every character featured here could make a good biopic. There’s activist Cleve Jones (a charismatic Emile Hirsch) who later founded the NAMES Aids quilt project, love of Harvey’s life Scott Smith (James Franco) and, of course, his bizarre murderer Dan White (an unsettling Josh Brolin).

The film does not overly tug at the heart strings, but rather the sadness and the hope seeps into you as you realise what one person can do, and how quickly bullets can stop everything. Milk is an inspirational insight into that one person, and into a part of history that few of us know about.