I din't know who the heck was Harvey Milk until I saw the movie on the big screen for the first time.
Usually, when I plan to watch a biographical movie, I make a point of getting a background about the person (I love Google..)
With Milk, I din't get a background, I din't find time to read a review. I just knew it was Sean Penn and that was good enough for me.
The movie left me trying to understand.. trying to put it in a genre - Was it poetic? Or Was it vibrant?
If it was vibrant, was it vibrant in a hippie way or in a sexual way, or in a manner of social and political triumph, or was it just plain vibrant for its humor? Above all was it so very vibrant for its goddamn truth!
There were scenes where more love was conveyed by Harvey and Scott than any woman and man I've watched on the big screen.
The uninhibited kisses, the soul searching eyes, the naked bodies showed more truth and honest love than many many love stories attempted to.
It left me in awe, that a Wall Street investment banker at 40 had the gumption to say "Enough!" - come out sexually, socially and politically like a deceptively lazy tiger which pounces on you with all is intelligence, charm and daring.
Sean Penn makes me love him in every goddamn movie. But this time, he just made me tie myself up for him :P
It left me confused - whose charm, guts and honesty knocked me out? - Milk's or Penn's ?
And then I sat there thinking about the bigger things - This guy did it all this by 1978! And people in India still look down on gays, lesbians, transexuals as untouchables and lechers. What's with all the hate?
Family values eroded? My friends.. weren't the family values already eroded when we don't accept anyone a little different from what we are?
Harvey Milk is a hero - a man who rose out of his own ashes. A New York Jew who had the guts to stand up and say "Yes.. I am!.. so shoot me for it!" "Yes!.. I'm there to give you hope" " If a bullet should enter my brain, let it destroy every closet"
The director Van Sant deserves a round of standing ovation for such a fantastic movie. The first scenes of the movie where gay bars are closed down and people taken away by the police and private lives destroyed on camera is just perfect for the opening.
It was amazingly poetic to cut back to Scott and Harvey's first conversation in bed - just when Harvey gets shot.
"..forty years old and I haven't done a thing I'm proud of" - It's so ironic that just after that Milk went on to become every gay's saint.
Van Sant and Lance Black gave a completeness to the screen life of Harvey Milk -
His joys, his pains, his playfulness,
his humor (I left my high heels at home!. ),
his manipulation (like every other politician - gay or otherwise, he got a riot staged and saved the day at the doors of the city hall - impressive!),
his mistakes (What the heck did he see in Jack??)
his love, his ideals("You gotta give them hope!") ... his life.
I don't think there was better biographical movie in 2009
Cheers to men like this!
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