We take our saints where we find them

Rating: 9/10 (18 October 2009)

I don't think we should suggest that Harvey Milk was any kind of saint unless, of course, we should redefine our definition of sainthood. Like all of God's creatures he was a totally fallible human being; in his case with a roving eye for a pretty boy and like the consummate politician that he was, was prepared to fight dirty if it meant advancing the cause that he was espoused to, which in his case was the liberation of 'his' people, gay men and women everywhere. You may argue that without him would we be where we are today. Saints, you see, come in all shapes and sizes and are not always easily recognizable and if we take this as our criteria, then Harvey Milk was some kind of saint.
Gus Van Sant's magnificent new film gives us Harvey warts and all. His journey to martyrdom is paved with broken hearts and at least one suicide. He was certainly charismatic but perhaps not always easy to like. Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black honors him without sugar-coating him. 'A homosexual with power, how scary is that', Harvey says at one point and we can see exactly where he is coming from. Had he lived, God knows where he might have ended up. America's first openly gay president? Don't knock it; minorities when they band together soon become the majority. But Harvey didn't live to see his legacy bear fruit as he was murdered by the obviously, in hindsight, deranged Dan White. Nevertheless, honored by a couple of Oscars, for this film and for Rob Epstien's documentary "The Times of Harvey Milk", his name has become a byword for liberationists everywhere and rightly so. We take our saints where we find them.
Here Harvey is played by Sean Penn and it's a brave a brilliant performance; brave, in that no matter how far we have come, straight actors playing 'gay' still risk ridicule and a degree of prejudice. While British society seems much more accepting of its actors and even its politicians 'coming out', America still lags a long way behind. We are not out of the woods, yet. The performance is brilliant in that Penn is a consummate character actor who can get inside the skin, the head and the heart of the man he chooses to play as he does here; there are few finer actors working in the world today. He is superbly supported by Josh Brolin, tapping into Dan White's desperate humanity, as well as by Emile Hirsch as his most ardent supporter and by James Franco as the love of his life whom he loses to his political ideals.
The film is obviously a project close to the heart of it's director and writer. Black's script has already won a richly deserved Oscar and in every respect this is the best thing Van Sant has done to date. That he doesn't completely whitewash Milk is to his credit but it's also a labour of love. Does it break new ground in terms of mainstream gay cinema? Hardly, since Van Sant plays down the sex card in favour of an almost romantically old-fashioned polemic. A couple of years ago "Brokeback Mountain", directed by the heterosexual Ang Lee and starring heterosexual actors Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, (playing gay) won a couple of Oscars, (groundbreaking in itself), but failed to win the predicted Best Picture prize. "Milk" may also have failed to win Best Picture but at least and at last Hollywood and the Academy finally recognized a major star playing a gay hero and honored openly gay writer Black. I think we can safely say it was the Harvey Milks of this world that made it possible.