“My name is Harvey Milk, and I am here to recruit you!”
Let’s get one thing straight—Milk is gay. Director Gus van Sant’s look at the career and assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in America, does not flinch in its depiction of the gay subculture that flourished in San Francisco between the summer of love in 1967 and the outbreak of AIDS. Cinematographer Harris Savides’ camera spends equal time in gay bars and city hall, capturing a moment in history when private lives turned very public.
As Harvey Milk, Sean Penn doesn’t hold back, kissing his male co-stars James Franco (Hairspray) and Diego Luna (Y Tu Mama Tambien) with an abandon as unself-conscious as his performance. As the film opens, Harvey is on the brink of his 40th birthday, which he spends in bed with Scott (Franco), a younger man he picks up on the subway in New York City. Buoyed by the ecstasy of early infatuation, Harvey and Scott decide to start over in San Francisco, opening up a camera shop, which becomes a gay haven. When Harvey is informally dubbed “The Mayor of Castro Street,” he begins to dream of holding public office.
Harvey Milk was a born politician, with a natural charisma and fearlessness that won people to his cause. One such recruit is Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch). He tries to brush Harvey off and instead, ends up one of his closest aides when Milk is finally elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors. Penn directed Hirsch in the underappreciated Into the Wild, and onscreen they have a natural chemistry that reminds the audience that not all relationships between gay men have to be sexual.
Harvey Milk’s tragic end has already been immortalized in the 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, so there’s no reason to play coy with the facts. Milk and San Francisco mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) were shot to death by Milk’s fellow supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin), who claimed that too much junk food had driven him out of his mind. But van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black find so much more in Harvey Milk’s story, especially by focusing on the toll that his relentless ambition took on his personal relationships.
Penn is astonishingly good. Even with his track record as an actor who reinvents himself with every role, this performance surpasses anything he’s ever done. He doesn’t hold back from playing Harvey as a proudly out homosexual. He doesn’t let any part of himself say to the audience, “Don’t forget I’m not actually gay.” The performance is brave, it’s enthusiastic, and most of all it’s entertaining.
Entertainment value in and of itself isn’t what makes Milk a must-see film for Christian audiences. Milk is worth watching because it is a portrait of go-for-broke advocacy of the “don’t hide your light under a bushel” kind. Milk consistently urged his aides, confidantes, friends and fans to go public. He believed that keeping one’s sexuality a secret gave power to those who would deny basic human rights to American citizens.
He knew that disclosure takes away the enemy’s biggest weapon. It wasn’t just gay pride for Harvey, either. He believed that secret is just another word for lie. While Harvey Milk’s personal life poses challenges for a Christian audience, his openness is worth imitating by Christians, for many of whom, cowardice and life in the closet are lies that deny the ultimate Truth.
Milk deserves its place as one of the best movies of 2008. As a portrait of a man sold out for his beliefs, it is a tutorial in publicly, authentically living out one’s commitments that no Christian should miss. Harvey Milk left behind a legacy that extended far beyond his immediate world. How many Christians can say the same?
Annie Frisbie is a Writers Guild of America Award-nominated screenwriter, film critic, and adjunct instructor of creative writing at Bethel University’s New York Center for Art and Media Studies.
