The standard Hollywood biopic faces a problem of balance. On the one hand, they attempt to tell a true story, to give facts and real information about one (presumably important) life. On the other hand, real lives are rarely the narratives we want them to be—loose ends aren’t tied up, characters fade in and out with jarring inconsistency, and the symbols and themes of one’s life don’t always reappear when they should.
The difficulty of making a movie about a real person, one that purports to tell “their” story, is in reconciling the messiness of life with the elegance of fiction. Gus Van Sant’s luminous Milk, the story of gay-rights activist Harvey Milk ( brilliantly played by Sean Penn), transcends these difficulties through the sheer burn of its actors, and it falters only when it attempts to shoehorn the more unwieldy bits of Milk’s history into the forward trajectory of the film.
The movie begins with Milk’s 40th birthday in New York City, when he first meets his longtime love Scott Smith (James Franco), and ends with his assassination in San Fransisco at the age of 48, after winning a seat on the city’s Board of Supervisors to become the first openly gay elected public official in the nation. The story is framed by a tape Milk made “in the event of [his] assassination,” which provides a convenient narration and reminds us from the very beginning of his life’s tragic end.
As we follow Milk from New York to San Francisco, from his ventures as a business owner to those of a political activist and crusader, Van Sant splices in real footage and pictures from the time period. Like any gimmick, the technique works best when it serves the story—newscasts of the relevant events occurring, footage of the actual figures—but becomes an annoyance when pictures freeze or screens meld into other ones.
In attempting to condense a lifetime of conversations into two hours, the movie can give the false impression that every moment of Milk’s career was full of brilliant, life-changing statements. Arguments in kitchens devolve into righteous outbursts of “I have to do this! And here’s why!”
However, Milk succeeds most at capturing the people involved: their moments and their camaraderie, how deeply they cared and how hard they worked. This is in no small part due to the incredible work of a nearly flawless cast. Sean Penn disappears into his role, delivering a free, open performance with his impish grin and funny curly hair. James Franco smolders as the supportive-but-disenchanted lover, giving off just the right levels of anger and softness—of deep abiding love combined with a wry understanding of life’s realities. The entire supporting cast is fantastic, from Emile Hirsch as the puckish campaign staffer Cleve Jones, to Lucas Grabeel as a photography assistant/campaign cheerleader.
Milk faces another challenge specific to the story it tells and the time in which it tells it. I saw the movie a few days before Proposition 8 passed, and it opened a week or two after nationwide protests against the proposition banning gay marriage. Clearly, the issues fought for in the film feel fiercely relevant.
Like any historical picture, however, Milk is ultimately a museum piece, a version of what was, well lit under plexiglass. Times definitely have changed, and Milk remains a bit ambivalent about whether it wants to be ‘here and now’ or ‘then and there.’ Perhaps the movie is best viewed as a fantastically passionate and talented piece of filmmaking rather than a generational moment. But for Harvey Milk, politics was theater and theater politics. Neither was separate from life, so it’s only fitting that Milk is so unsure of those boundaries.
