A stop along the road to civil rights for gays

Rating: 7/10 (26 July 2009)

This film is ostensibly about Harvey Milk, a gay man who was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, at the age of 47. More broadly the film is about the early gay rights movement and, while sticking pretty much to the facts, it is in clear sympathy with that movement. To its credit it does not hide the fact that Milk had sex with other men. The scenes of homosexuals kissing and being in bed together may not play well with heterosexuals, most of whom I think do not have problems with homosexuals until they think of homosexuals having sex. If the film is honest in dealing with Milk's sexuality, it does hide the fact that he was known to have a quick temper and could be difficult to deal with. As presented here Milk is nothing but praiseworthy. Also, there is no mention of the ugly rioting that occurred after Dan White (Milk's assassin) was given the fairly light sentence of seven years for voluntary manslaughter. Altogether there is little evidence of gays behaving badly.
Maybe it is because I had already seen the excellent 1984 documentary "The Times of Harvey Milk," but it was hard to see what was special about Harvey Milk based on Penn's performance--he did not come close to capturing the charisma of the real Harvey Milk as seen in the aforementioned documentary. In short, "The Times of Harvey Milk," is more illuminating and engrossing than "Milk." Josh Brolin (as Dan White) proves once again that he is one good actor and Emile Hirsch offers a winning portrayal of Cleve Jones, a young gay activist. Allison Pill is delightful as Anne Kronenberg, Milk's successful campaign manager.
The integration of archival footage with reenactments is a bit confusing. For example, the candlelight march is clearly a mixture of reenactment footage with archival. This left me to wonder what was reenactment and what was real. Were the opening scenes, showing gays being ripped out of bars and arrested for the crime of drinking a beer while gay, for real?
This movie tends toward being heavy on message, but you do come away from it with a better understanding of the struggles that gays have had in fighting for their civil rights. Milk's greatest achievement was his successful campaign against California's Proposition 6 that would have banned homosexuals from teaching in public schools. But the struggle continues, as evidenced by the recent passage of California's Proposition 8 that bans gay marriage. As has been said, nobody ever got their rights simply by asking for them.