Milk (the movie)

Jackie ♦ December 16, 2008 ♦ 3 Comments

Like many East Coast liberals, my husband and I recently went to see Milk, starring Sean Penn and depicting the life and times of Harvey Milk, the first gay elected official who was tragically assassinated early in his political career.

Of course, it’s a very timely film these days in the aftermath of the Proposition 8 reversal in California– in fact, one of the strange coincidences is that part of the movie’s timeline involves an anti-gay referendum called Proposition 6– but it is worth seeing for more than its political relevance. Just as the reviews are saying, Sean Penn slips easily into Harvey Milk’s skin in a powerful and touching performance, while James Franco shows much more acting talent than I, for one, had previously suspected (though of course, his role in Freaks and Geeks will always earn him a place in my affections).

I had read Randy Shilts’s book The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk after reading his great And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, which I found especially illuminating for someone like me who grew up post-AIDS. By the time I was born in 1978, the epidemic was raging across more than one continent, so I don’t remember a time before it, sadly enough.

I haven’t read Shilts’ last book, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military, but as a journalist, he is a great role model not only for comprehensive research skills, but for exploring issues that mainstream media did not often want to hear about in thoroughly researched volumes that somehow managed to be emphatic without overstated, powerful and persuasive and angry books that pioneered new areas of activism and journalism. While some of his theories on the disease and its origins are no longer as true, it’s still a pretty stunning work of journalism.

All in all, I’d be very surprised if Milk doesn’t get some Oscar nominations come awards time, and I would definitely recommend going to see it, and reading some of the books that inspired it. It certainly seems like popular opinion and political relevance are coinciding– we can only hope the new presidential administration feels the same way.