What’s it about
This film is a real life docu-drama of Harvey Milk, America’s first openly gay, elected supervisor. Milk looks back in time and records all his life incidents on a tape that is meant to be played in the event of his assassination. All the incidents of his eventful life as a gay activist play out as the movie progresses.
Harvey leaves his job as a businessman and runs away to San Francisco on the eve of his 40th birthday, along with his newly found boyfriend Scott. They move to an area called Castro which is heavily populated by gays from all across America. They open a shop called Castro Cameras. Milk isn’t able to tolerate the atrocities that are committed against gays by the police. So, he unites all the gays and becomes a gay activist. He runs for the job of San Francisco board supervisor for many years and finally gets elected in a history making event.
He has to fight against anti-gay people like Anita Bryant and John Briggs. He is particularly against a law that proposes to fire homosexual teachers in all schools and even the people who support homosexuals. Finally, Milk ensures that such a law isn’t put in motion, much to the elation of all his supporters.
People like Cleve Jones and Anne Kronenberg are major pillars in Milk’s career as a gay supervisor in the San Francisco board. But, Milk has a troubled relationship with his boyfriends due to his high profile political career.
Another supervisor Dan White is jealous of Milk’s high profile public appearances and at the same time his incompetence compared to Milk’s charm. So, White assassinates Milk and also Mayor Moscone who was strongly behind all of Milk’s actions. The movie ends with all of the LGBT community conducting a peaceful march in memory of their hero and also some information about what actually happened to the other main players in their respective real lives.
Hits
- Sean Penn is an absolute natural as the gay Harvey Milk. The facial expressions, the hand gestures are all perfect. Another master-class from Penn
- James Franco and Emile Hirsch as Scott and Cleve respectively, have adequate parts and they excel with their charm
- The appropriate usage of real footage is particularly impressive
- The narration style through the tape recording is awesome.
- Great painstaking research done by the entire team to recreate all the legendary real life characters and incidents.
- The intensely political scenes are very gripping
A real eye opener about such a huge gay movement with so many obstacles. Though scenes of 2 men kissing and making love were very shocking, their sheer passion to be their true-selves and not hide in the closet, wins us over.
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