Milk: Proposition Hate

Rob Epstein and Richard Schmiechen’s groundbreaking 1984 documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk, spent a third of its length on White’s murder trial, including powerful footage of the flaming riots that greeted White’s conviction on a lesser charge of manslaughter. Van Sant prefers to show a community together. He doesn’t avert his gaze from Milk’s death (foreshadowed by the finale of Tosca, as well as a personal tragedy passed over by the Epstein-Schmiechen documentary), but he wraps it in a comforter of last-day reconciliations, romantic flashbacks and ethereal patriotic music.

Corny as it is, Van Sant’s ending still packs a wallop. Milk is so immediate that it’s impossible to separate the movie’s moment from this one. The 1978 victory over Prop. 6 merges with the current struggle against California’s Proposition 8, overturning the state Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. A charismatic leader has yet to emerge but there is . . .Milk, and its wholehearted devotion to the principle of equal protection under the law. (Sound bites from the filmed demonstrations are near-identical to those culled from those held two weekends ago.)

Phil Bray

Yes we can

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More About

• Gus Van Sant
• Harvey Milk
• Dan White
• GLBT Issues
• Politics

Van Sant and Black position Milk as both gutsy civil rights leader and creative community organizer — not to mention a precedent-shattering politician who, it’s often reiterated, presented himself as a Messenger of Hope. And also Change: “A homosexual with power, that’s scary,” Milk jokes by way of alerting the viewer that he not only anticipated but understood his assassin’s motives. Milk is now. The ecstatic reception accorded Wall-E’s visionary tikkun (and the president-elect’s strategic nonsupport for same-sex marriage) notwithstanding, it’s the first openly Obama-iste movie.

Here’s hoping that Milk and Penn’s Milk do as well in our annual fake election. When The Times of Harvey Milk won its Oscar for Best Documentary, presenter Kathleen Turner described it as “a film about American values in conflict.” This time, the Academy won’t have to be as discreet.

MILK | Directed by GUS VAN SANT | Written by DUSTIN LANCE BLACK | Produced by DAN JINKS and BRUCE COHEN | Released by Focus Features | AMC Broadway, ArcLight Hollywood, ArcLight Sherman Oaks, The Grove, The Landmark