Thirty years after the death of human-rights activist Harvey Milk, film director Gus Van Sant (“Drugstore Cowboy”) and actor Sean Penn (“Mystic River”) gave us the gift of the movie “Milk.”
The film is based on the moving, real story of the first openly-gay man to be elected to public office in the United States (San Francisco, 1977).
Penn would win an Oscar for this “eerily-accurate” portrayal of Harvey Milk, says a Kaua‘i friend of mine. What also struck my friend was the screenplay (Oscar-winning script) that brings us into the everyday life of a man who made extraordinary changes in our awareness. The film is also packed with wonderful actors from Josh Brolin (“W.”), Diego Luna (“Y Tú Mama También”) and Emile Hirsch (“Into the Wild”) to James Franco (“Spider-man”).
In my first experience with this film I was moved to tears.
I’ve never cried in the theater — especially when I know how the movie ends.
I was living in Sacramento at the time and very aware of the political climate surrounding Proposition 8 (gay-marriage law in California).
The art-house cinema where I saw “Milk” was a mere 10 blocks from the Capitol, which is a symbol of what so many have striven for — democracy and equality.
I get chicken skin remembering how powerful that night was. It changed me as a filmmaker and as a straight male.
The film took me into the dynamics of a world that I had never experienced.
In the famous words of Yogi Berra “the similarities were different.”
I was connected to “Milk” through the artistic beacon of Penn’s mastery and ordinary life presented to me through the eyes of one of cinema’s masters, Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting”). I felt renewed in my understanding of our shared human condition. As a filmmaker I was truly and honestly inspired by this work of art.
The pacing of the film reproduced the growing passion of the changing times. Milk and those around him made up the community he used to express his love. Milk seemed to have understood that his care and responsibility to office was not just to his community, but to all of the communities in his city at that time.
Milk’s life and death would ultimately inspire the 1989 Oscar-winning documentary “Common Threads,” the Nobel Peace Prize-winning AIDS memorial “NAMES” Quilt (founded by Cleve Jones, who was a political organizer and close friend of Milk). Jones conceived this idea in 1985 during a remembrance march for the death of Milk and Mayor Moscone.
Malama Pono has shown portions of the “Quilt” here on Kaua‘i multiple times.
The 1985 best documentary winner at the Academy Awards was “The Times of Harvey Milk.”
That film would inspire a young Mormon man named Lance Black to “come out” and write the movie “Milk.”
“Hope will never be silent.” — Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 to Nov. 27, 1978)
Warning: Adult situations appear in ‘Milk.’
Year: 2008
Director: Gus Van Sant
Starring: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin
Awards: 2 Oscars
1. Manchurian Candidate (1962)
2. Ghandhi (1982)
3. JFK (1991)
4. X (1992)
5. Motorcycle Diaries (2004)
6. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
7. Goodnight and Goodluck (2005)
8. An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
9. Bobby (2006)
10. Che (2008)
