Review of The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) by Kenneth L — 19 Sep 2010

This is a pretty standardly well-made documentary that has the good fortune of having very interesting subject matter. Obviously, it's about the political career of Harvey Milk, who became the country's first openly gay elected official in San Francisco in the 1970s (and also the subject of the recent Sean Penn movie).

The film just straightforwardly tells the story, and gives you as much information as probably anybody would want unless they were a historian studying Milk in depth. It uses the typical documentary elements: interviews, archival footage, and photographs.

Oh, also it's narrated by Harvey Fierstein, which just ups the gay ante that much more. It's an interesting story, and Milk comes across as a nice, practical-minded guy who was sincerely interested in promoting gay rights, but also in convincing the average schmo that gay people were ok.

The main problem with the movie is that they seem to have interviewed only a handful of people, most of whom knew Milk moderately well. It would have been nice to see interviews with a broader spectrum of people, including both Milk's closest associates as well as people who maybe didn't know Milk at all but have some relevant expertise.

Overall, though, this is a perfectly good documentary in its own right, and it will be interesting to compare to the Sean Penn movie whenever I get around to seeing that.