"You can't violate God's law."

Rating: 7/10 (29 October 2009)

Not a bad biography of Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), the gay San Francisco City Supervisor who, along with Mayor Moscone, was assassinated by political opponent Dan White (Josh Brolin) in 1978.
Penn has got Milk's speech and mannerisms down pat. (The HOURS he must have put into research.) On display are Milk's insouciant charm and his political savvy, accessorized by some touches of egotism. There is nothing flamboyantly "homosexual" about Milk's mannerisms. That was probably part of his winning ways outside the Castro. Not that it would have kept him from running for office if he'd been a flaming queer. I lived in the Bay Area at the time and remember one of the candidates for a minor office -- "Sister Boom Boom", a male who dressed in a vulgar parody of a nun's outfit with short skirt, high heels, fishnet stockings, and lurid make up. It wouldn't have kept Milk from running but it would have kept him from winning.
There shouldn't be anything surprising about Milk's having become the first openly gay man to hold a major elective office. California has a way of tolerating all sorts in its politics. It can elect a Viennese weight lifter as governor, or propel an aging ex-actor into the presidency.
The story if naturally from Harvey Milk's point of view. His ghost narrates the events of his career into a tape recorder. He inevitably emerges as the heroic protagonist he was. (Who knows which of all those death threats is real?) And he undoubtedly stood for office in order to promote something greater than himself.
Nor does the movie avoid mention of any of his human flaws. He begins his first campaign as a rather typical liberal -- more help for seniors, aid for schools and minorities, and so forth. But his political persona devolves into something narrower, defined as he sees it through the prism of his sexual orientation. Then, too, he wants to "out" every homosexual in America, whether they want it or not. (A subordinate points out to Milk that this might be disturbing to the outed persons' families and careers, but he shrugs it off.) When the sublime Anita Bryant -- the orange-juice saleslady who is convinced that Jesus loves everybody but queers -- pulls off a win for "family values" in Florida, Milk doesn't hesitate to get his supporters together and shout that they should "show your anger." Being permitted to show your anger is one of several advantages to victimhood. You get to have an enemy and heap your calumny upon him. Especially when your enemy is Anita ("Family Values") Bryant or a nerd like State Senator Briggs, who can't tell "homosexuality" from "pedophilia." As a victim, you also get to participate in what the sociologost Arnold van Gennep called "rites of intensification." The gays have theirs, including Halloween in San Francisco, and we have ours -- the Fourth of July parades, the Christmas carols, Cinco de Mayo, Yom Kippur. Hitler's Nurenberg rallies were among the most imposing of rites of intensification.
But in a way the villain here is not so much Dan White, although he was its instrument. It's intolerant categorical thinking, the belief in a Manichaean world that is black OR white, good OR evil, with no room for anything in between or any mixture in any proportion of both. Dan White's declaration is emblematic: "I grew up differently. Everything was either moral or immoral." In categorical thinking, all sorts of weird things are lumped together simply because they're seen as either "moral" or "immoral." A little something is just as bad as a lot of something. That's why Senator Briggs can't separate homosexuality from pedophilia. Anita Bryant argues with a bright smile that gay rights today will lead to rights for thieves and murderers tomorrow. And Milk writes that if we can fire gays today, we should look at what happened next to the fired gays in 1930s Germany.
I kind of missed a more thorough explanation of Dan White's behavior though, especially since Josh Brolin did such a crackerjack job of projecting White's distress. In a way, White the murderer was a more complicated and interesting man than Milk the victim. He really meant it when he said something was either moral or immoral. He blew his brains out two years after his release from prison. And he experienced a volcano of torment trying to support his traditional family on the measly salary of a City Supervisor. During his temporary resignation he operated some kind of fast food joint which failed to do business.
You can't expect much about Dan White in a movie entitled "Milk," of course, but in some ways "Milk and White" might have made for a more gripping story.