Got Milk?

Harvey Milk liked Opera and played football in high school. He had heavy eyelids, protruding ears, and at one point grew a moustache. He worked on Wall Street, in an insurance firm, and served in the US Navy. He ran for office three times before he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978.

He is an American icon because by assuming public office, he was the first openly gay man in the United States to do so.

The life of Harvey Milk did not throb with heroism, nor was it especially political; it was simply the life of right man in the right place at the right time. This is something that a biopic could easily ignore in light of his historic impact on the American gay rights movement. However the 2008 film “Milk” is a compilation of the right director, the right actor, and the right screenplay—and the result is as humbly momentous as the man it mortalizes.

It is a film that encompasses the very soul of American cinema. Boisterous demonstrations to a soundtrack of honking bullhorns and chanting voices radiate a sense of urgency and empowerment; tender love scenes cause goosebumps to spring up on the back of your neck, real footage from the 1970s interspersed with a perfectly recreated world of the California hipster-haven arouse nostalgia, and an operatic candlelight vigil and epilogue warrants moist eyes.

Watching Sean Penn act in this movie, there is no doubt that he is one of the great actors alive today. The conviction and humanity that Penn brings to his every performance manifests its self here with overwhelming veracity. With a smile on his face and not an ounce of gallantry, he assumes the character of a man stuck in life, and who pulls himself forward and brings America with him.

The most complex element of the film is Milk’s relationship with his fellow supervisor, Dan White (Josh Brolin). It is all too clear that White’s overt homophobia casts a dark shadow over his self-esteem. His “perfect” family and equally “perfect” principles take on a lurid edge as he tries to better associate himself with Milk and becomes jealous when public image prohibits him from embracing his own individuality. Perhaps this is why he assassinated Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone on November 27, 1978.

The story of Harvey Milk is not uniquely isolated to the gay community or even the gay rights movement. Milk was a man who stood up and fought for all the people who were being forced to sit down. He defied the odds by opening the door to a better America that we are still trying to walk through today. We are a country of individuals with every opportunity to use that individuality to make a difference for our nation. A movement begins with an idea and an idea begins with a person; it may take time to spread but we are a determined nation and we will get there. America is only as great as the citizens who make their voices heard.