Milk is an Oscar
winning political biography of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected
official in American history. The story begins in New York City in 1970 when the soon to be
forty year old Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) meets a younger man Scott Smith (James
Franco) on the subway. The two become lovers and with Milk wanting to make
something of his life the two men move to San Francisco where they eventually
open a camera shop in the Castro neighbourhood which is slowly becoming more
and more homosexual friendly. Over the years Milk begins campaigning for equal
rights for homosexuals before running for office multiple times. Milk tells the story of his struggle for
office, recognition and respect from his fortieth birthday to untimely death
eight years later.
Milk has for a few
years been one of those films which I wanted to see, but just hadn’t got around
to. It turned out to be pretty much the film I expected it to. It made me
angry, I was interested and engaged and occasionally enraged. Sean Penn’s
performance was excellent too and I’m not surprised that it along with the
subject matter won him an Oscar. For me the film accomplished exactly what it
set out to. It educated me.
