Less About Coming Out But More About Chasing Your Dreams

Rating: 9/10 (18 June 2018)

When it comes to biopics, the thing that stands out for me is the feeling I'm entering the lives of another person's life and hoping that I cab get a bigger picture of that person and get a better understanding of their triumphs and failures in hope that if I meet a person similar to that character I would feel more confident if ever I should approach them. The 2008 Oscar winning film "Milk" directed by Gus Van Sant follows the the remaining eight eventful years of Harvey Milk's life as he makes the transition from a complete unknown to a being one the first openly gay political official as part of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. As I mentioned in the title, "Milk" isn't entirely on coming out as gay during a time when homosexuality wasn't tolerated but more of chasing your dreams to reach your fullest potential regardless of what obstacles stand in your way.
Back in 2008, "Milk" was given a plethora of accolades in the film industry most noteworthy being the sublime performance by Sean Penn as the titular character. With the make-up, costumes and molding of his character traits, Penn wasn't just playing Harvey Milk, he was Harvey Milk. His character was portrayed as a calmly spoken, idealistic novice politician who overcame incredible odds like standing up to the government giants while tackling the prejudices he faced in his personal life. In keeping the balance between his work and home, it was his job to cater to the emotional needs of his partner Scott Smith (James Franco) as he discover the world has become more public and that he made it his decision to pun for a political office as time and ambition was drawing near. After many years of Franco starring in a stream of action films and comedy it was great to see him in a more dramatic film and he pulled it off flawlessly.
Aside from Penn and Franco's performances, the supporting characters are also quite effective in not only their acting, but by their physical characteristics as well. Josh Brolin was effective as Milk's fellow colleague and rival Dan White and the chilling tale of his character is quite the thing that'll make your skin crawl. Emile Hirsch as Harvey's associates Cleve Jones was effective, though his screen time was limited.
After the events that happened here between 1970-1978, it has been maybe only recently that North America has found more acceptance to the LGBT community and has made great strides in helping these individuals be happy with the skin they own and not have to live in fear and despair. Harvey Milk was a man who set out on a journey to overcome the odds to help his people prosper and to stand proud and open up and to say there are millions out there like him and they're not afraid of who they are and no one else should be. By coming out and admitting one's orientation was the pivotal step for one to crush the walls of homophobia and that everyone must co-exist. If more people were to accept those and not judge, the world would be a better place.
I liked how Van Sant utilized archive footage to the film which adds authenticity to the narrative giving this film a dose of realism to the script. In this way he's doing it as a contribution to the cause as opposed to just arbitrarily pasting it into the scenes. The approach here has a more caring side to it contrary to being preachy and just unmercifully rubbing it in our faces.
Change can be good or bad depending on one's point of view, and the goal that Harvey Milk embarked on was that he wasn't asking for a lot, but just wanted the world to be a little more accepting and a lot less negative and his dreams was not just to make homosexual people's life a little more caring for the world around them but to have a strong leader in the political spectrum to stand up for them. Sure the theme is on homosexual acceptance, but in this big world we live in we face struggles in every aspect of life making "Milk" a more universally themed movie.