Milk
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Written by Dustin Lance Black
With Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch and Josh Brolin
In cinemas
In the opening scenes of the movie Milk, starring Sean Penn, old black and white newsreels from the 1950s silently depict police raiding gay bars, herding men into paddy wagons.
The images of police persecution hit you in the gut. The reaction is similar to the shock and outrage aroused when viewing images of Black civil rights demonstrators being attacked by cops and dogs — and this invited link between the civil rights movement and gay liberation is not accidental. It is just one of the insights contained in this thoughtful, realistic portrayal of the life and times of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person elected to prominent US office.
With a couple of exceptions and thanks to Milk's own oral history, recorded just months before his assassination, the film is historically accurate. It covers the period from Milk's arrival in San Francisco in the mid-1970s to his election as a city supervisor and his death in office in 1978. Milk's murder is announced at the movie's outset, and the plot follows his collision course with the wrapped-too-tight Dan White, a fellow supervisor.
The backdrop for the drama is the era's gay movement.
Lesbians and gays were storming out of the closet demanding an end to our oppression. By the time Milk was running for office, a backlash against these demands was brewing, and the Christian right had begun to gain steam.
Featured at length in Milk are two fundamentalist Christians and crusading homophobes, Anita Bryant and John Briggs. Bryant, a singer and orange-juice industry pitch woman, was the national point person for an effort to overturn gay rights ordinances. California politician Briggs was the author of an initiative that would have barred lesbians and gays, as well as supporters of gay rights, from working in the state's public schools.
Seeing the film, I kept fast-forwarding to the present. The passage in November of California's Proposition 8, outlawing same-sex marriage, is a reminder that hard-won reforms can be reversed. Demagogues may come and go, but the struggle for full rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people continues.
Director Gus Van Sant deftly weaves news footage and scripted scenes together into a moving narrative. Emile Hirsch turns in a convincing performance as the young activist Cleve Jones. And Josh Brolin's masterful depiction of the tortured Dan White is chilling.
The story is no less engrossing because we know how it ends. And, in spite of its tragic conclusion, the movie is thoroughly uplifting.
Milk was ultimately successful in his bid for a seat on the board of supervisors because he built a coalition of unionists, seniors, and people of colour, among others. His is a joyful politics of inclusion, and his ability to connect gay rights to other struggles is something we can all learn from.
But there are some missteps in the telling of this story.
If I didn't know better, the film would have me believe that Anne Kronenberg, who ran Milk's first successful campaign, was the only lesbian to play a crucial role in the struggle. Many, however, fought hard to defeat the Briggs initiative and in support of the Coors beer boycott, also mentioned in the film.
I also think the movie's creators have a faulty understanding of queer liberation, which they seem to suggest is primarily a process of coming out of the closet. But this is only a first step. Gay oppression is not just based on intolerance or ignorance; uppity women and queers threaten a system that relies on business as usual — economically, socially, and in the family.
Still, the film aptly portrays the electricity and vitality of a living, breathing mass movement. In a sense, the biggest star of Milk is the gay movement itself.
As someone who was a queer activist in San Francisco during the period the movie covers, I think it captures the sense of optimism and purpose we felt quite nicely. It was a thrill to march and organise and speak out against 'phobes like Bryant and Briggs. When we fought back against the cops in the Castro district or came out to family and coworkers, we were making history and transforming ourselves and our world in the process.
Watching the militant in-your-face tactics we used to defeat the Briggs initiative, I was energised and inspired. I came away determined to pass on the story of our movement to younger queers.
Far from feeling a passive nostalgia for the good old days, the film elicits a profound sense of pride — and a renewed commitment to carry on the fight. Every worthwhile reform is not granted to us by politicians and bureaucrats, but won by everyday people in the streets demanding our human rights.
I'll see you on the picket line!
[Writer and psychotherapist Sukey Wolf, now living in Seattle, took part in the protest following White's conviction for manslaughter rather than murder, known as the White Night riots. This review abridged from the US Freedom Socialist http://www.socialism.com]