Review of Milk? (2012) by Lilian O — 01 Jun 2012

I've never heard of Harvey Milk. I didn't know much about him when I saw this, but I loved this movie - because it felt so real. It was like everything in the film really happened. This is the story of America's first openly gay elected official, and it reminded me a lot of Martin Luther King Jr. and the African Americans being hated by the whites. Here, it's the straights against the gays.

Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) lives in New York, and in the day of his 40th birthday, he meets Scott (James Franco). The two spend the night together, and Harvey decides to run away with Scott to San Francisco. The two open a camera shop on Castro Street which becomes the centre for Harvey?s attempts to run for office. He starts to gather up supporters including Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch) and many others. As Harvey grows more popular among the Americans, they become more determined to fight against those who won't allow homosexuals equal rights. Like I said, I didn't know anything about Harvey Milk. What I loved most was that they told us that these characters were real. At the end of the film, near the credits, they tell us what happened to some of the main characters such as Scott and Cleve. As a lot of you may know, Harvey was assasinated in 1978 by fellow San Francisco Supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin) - the way they've shown this in the film is fantastic. They don't even make White feel like a villain, he was actually a nice guy. Harvey Milk's character was handled so beautifully. They've shown all sorts of sides to him, and he has a full range of emotions. Anger, sadness and joy - it's all here! We see his kind, brave and heroic sides. He's such a loveable character, and the others like Cleve Jones are very fun. The dialogue is great - which is no suprise considering this won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Sean Penn was the winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was charming as Harvey, it's no wonder that he won that award. The supporting cast were also great. Deigo Luna played Jack, Harvey's boyfriend after Scott breaks up with him, and he was very witty. Josh Brolin was impressive as Dan White. James Franco's Scott was delightful. Emile Hirsch was outstanding as the funny Cleve Jones.

This is just me, but the film did get confusing for me. I don't know much about politics, so I didn't know what they were talking about in some of this. I'm still a bit blurry on the reason of why White killed Harvey. A lot of the stuff about the politics just muddled me up. It's jus me though, i'm sure you'll get it.

This is delightful film about a very interesting man. I support what Harvey stood for. I think that straight people should not judge and hate someone who is gay. Like Brokebake Mountain (which is one of my favourite films), they handle the gay part of this with dignity, and don't use as a form of humour. I loved this, and I think you will too. Highly Recommended!