MILK - NOT THE KIND YOU DRINK!

Now, this one has been on my mind for a while. It’s quite a phenomenon of a film to watch – Sean Penn shines in his role as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician to be elected in the U.S.A. and one of the founders of the gay rights movement. The story is truly one worth telling and Sean Pen does do a brilliant job but I will say it again and again, Mickey Rourke should have got Best Actor that year. Really. Not that anyone actually listens to me and I try not to bang on about it but I think he deserved some kind of accolade for bringing himself back from near self-destruction and addiction to Oscar® nominated acting. I think the effort alone deserved an award, never mind that fact that he was brilliant. Oh well though, life goes on and so must my blog entry, so I will now reign myself in and concentrate solely on Sean Penn and Harvey Milk.
“Today” says Harvey to the young man he has picked up at a subway station and has decided to spend the night with “is my 40th birthday. And I have realized that I have achieved absolutely nothing.” He is a government official in the Water Board, he has an OK career, a life with nothing to complain about but nothing to gloat about either. So when moving to San Francisco with the young man (Scott Smith who will actually become his lifelong lover albeit with ups and downs and histrionics and tantrums) and starting all over again comes up Harvey just says “why not”. And does it. They open a camera shop in the Castro area of San Francisco all seems to be going well. But the year is 1972 and even in San Francisco (that was considered one of the more liberal cities even back then) anti-gay feeling is rife. Harvey being gay takes this very personally. And decides that the time has come to do something about it…
The rest is, of course, history. Now, we live in a world of multiculturalism and openness or so we claim but still prejudice of many kinds is rife. I mean, I’m sure you or I are not particularly prejudiced. But the thing is most of us don’t do anything to prevent prejudice spreading either… That’s why it’s important to honor and remember the people who do. And Harvey Milk was a first. He may have done “nothing” until he was 40, he then went down in history… By the way, I like that kind of story – people who “become” something later on in life, gives one hope if you see what I mean. In the same way, Beethoven didn’t finish his first composition until he was 30. Mozart, who met him, deemed him a waste of time. Haydn was the only person who realized the young man had talent and well, he was right… Good Heavens I’m off on one again but surely you see how it was vaguely connected?
The film itself is absolutely brilliant. (It did NOT win the Oscar® for Best Screenplay for nothing). It transports you back to the 70’s… And it’s not just Harvey Milk, all the characters are brilliant, the actors as well but the characters themselves – hats off to Gus van Sant, some do say that his films are slightly “themed” but this one’s a good-un. It’s really a story worth finding out about. I mean it is true, the likes of you and I don’t actively do anything to prevent prejudice – but at least we can be well informed about such things… That in itself is something too you know…