BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Movie Review: Milk
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Movie Review: Milk
I saw Milk, the biopic about Harvey Milk, 1978-assassinated gay rights activist/politician on a semi-date Monday afternoon, and rather doing my usual routine of jotting down some comments and a score, then leaving it to forever rot on my notes page, I'm going to type up a quick review. It beats doing actual work during my last half hour of consciousness for the day.
Milk is a biopic, one focused very tightly on Harvey's life. It plays almost like a dramatized documentary, with the events, as far as I know, only slightly fictionalized. That's a good choice, since the filmmakers had no real need to embroider them, they were so riveting. Quick summary: Milk was 40 and bored living in NYC, in the closet, working in the insurance industry. He met a guy and fell in love, and on his 40th birthday they dropped everything and moved to San Francisco, settling in the Castro district as it was becoming a gay haven. Milk got into politics gradually, starting as a community organizer working to fight against anti-gay discrimination and police brutality. He ran for city office several times and kept losing, though he got more votes each time. Milk finally got elected as one of 11 city supervisors after some redistricting allowed local areas to elect their own leadership, but after just a year on the job, with his local power and national prominence growing, he was assassinated, along with the SF mayor, by one of his fellow city supervisors.
The murders, and their aftermath, were huge news at the time, and archival footage of the reports are shocking to view even today. Skip to 2:20 in this one to see the dramatic announcement by Dianne Feinstein to the despairing, horrified crowd.
The movie covers most of those events, and a lot of others in Harvey's personal and professional life. To the scores.
Milk, 2008 Script/Story: 7 Acting/Casting: 8 Action: NA Eye Candy: 5 Fun Factor: 4 Replayability: 6 Overall: 7
It was a good movie, on the whole. Excellent performances by all the leads and supporting actors. It had a good script and did a good job portraying the mood of the times, though it was too focused on the individual to really capture the mood of the gay rights movement. It wasn't maudlin or tear-jerker in style, though it had the material to be that. It didn't flinch from showing gay men in love, though there's nothing more sexual than some kissing, and it has quite a bit less nudity than any actual street event in the Castro, then or now.
The things I disliked about it were not major, but there were enough of them to keep me from giving it a higher score. The main problem was that it was unfocused and got tedious and repetitious during the middle section: Harvey tries real hard and all his gay friends pitch in, but he loses another noble struggle to be elected to the city council. Another anti-gay ordinance is up for a vote somewhere else in the US and passes setting off rioting in the Castro. Rinse and repeat. The film is 128 minutes, and I think 100 would have been plenty. And made for a better movie without the overlong second act.
The opening was interesting. We got to know Harvey and saw him move to San Francisco, then find a purpose in life as events drove him to start some (very successful) neighborhood activism. His political rise was well-depicted, if rather simplified. A montage of scenes of him organizing the gay bars to dump Coors beer, in partnership with a strike by the Teamsters, was a nice example of how political coalitions are formed. Unfortunately that part blended into his efforts to gain political office, and that section went on and on.
I wasn't a fan of how the ending was played either. The movie opened with some news footage reporting Milk's and Moscone's deaths, (including the bit from Feinstein that's in the clip I embedded above). Also, for a bridging narrative device throughout the film we saw Sean Penn, as Milk, dictating notes into a recorder. He starts off by saying these tapes are to be played only in the event of his death by assassination. So even if you didn't know the real history, it wasn't any surprise that he was going to be killed by a co-worker, and since the film only had room for one other main character in the city government, it was obvious who the killer would be. Facts that made the movie's handling of that event very odd.
We didn't see Dan White (the killer) freaking out, or loading a gun, or stewing silently and crazily. We just saw him sitting up all night one night, and then awkwardly climbing into city hall through a downstairs window (to avoid the metal detectors in the lobby), walking calmly (and waiting) to see the mayor, and then (after blowing him away) doing the same to Milk. I assume some element of that was an editorial decision meant to contradict the infamous "twinkie defense" that got White such minimal jail time. In the movie White wasn't shown to be depressed, estranged from his wife, freaking out, binging on junk food, or any of the other facts presented in his (successful) legal defense. (On the other hand, he wasn't given some gratuitous homophobia either; the mayor was denying him his job after he cracked up and resigned, and Milk was a political enemy; it wasn't an overtly anti-gay statement.) At any rate, that approach made the ending abrupt, but not surprising. It also robbed the events of their power, since the audience wasn't given any build up or sense of dread for what was coming.
Those quibbles aside, I think the film is worth seeing for the quality of the performances and the events depicted, no matter how ham-fistedly some of them they were presented. I enjoyed it and found it thought and discussion-provoking. Also, not to toot my own horn (for praise or damnation) but I've been comfortable being around gay people for decades, have gay friends, don't get creeped out by homosexuality (the real kind, not just the lipstick lesbian type that serves as straight male-targeted porn), etc. So while this movie wasn't eye-opening or shocking or prejudice-challenging for me, it probably will be for a lot of other people, which would add a whole level of power and effect to their viewing experience that it didn't impart to me. Consider that bonus when you think you might want to view it, especially if you're going to drag along some slightly or largely homophobic friends/relations.
One other comment on the film, on a stylistic note. The director, Gus Van Zant, made an interesting choice in one area of stylism. He chose not to "Forrest Gump" the historical scenes, and didn't inserting Sean Penn's character, or any of the supporting characters, into the archival footage. I'm sure this was a conscious choice; after all, the technology existed more than a decade ago. That said, I found it jarring, since the film would routinely show some grainy footage of a street march, or a demonstration, or some other event from the 70s, and then cut to fictional reenactment of that scene, with Sean Penn giving a speech. The footage of Penn as Milk was crystal clear and modern though, and while everyone had on period costumes (and that horrible 70s hair), it was never less than obvious that this was a movie scene on a set, with extras and blue screen and such. I was almost reminded of some Saturday Night Live sketches, where they'll show crowd footage and then cut to Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey (or whoever's on the show these days) in the studio with half a dozen extras milling around. It wasn't a comical effect in the movie, but it was an odd choice for the film. I found it offputting; it was almost like watching a play, where a short video of some outdoor war was shown, and then after a moment of blackness you see 4 guys in togas with prop swords and another actor lying on the floor with ketchup on his robes. It required a suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience, and I'm not sure what benefit was derived from presenting the material that way, other than saving some money on post production special effects.
Another interesting aspect of things was how (male) gay relationships were presented, and how immediately and effortlessly sexual they were. Even in the greatly-sanitized presentation they received in the film. I'll get to that in a separate post though, since it digresses far from the substance of this, generally excellent, film.
Finally, here's one more collection of news footage and shots of frantic cops dashing around city hall in the aftermath of the assassinations, plus moving scenes of the tens of thousands of candle-carrying mourners who turned out to the vigil for Milk and Moscone.
