Not Your Mother’s Biopic: Gus Van Sant’s Milk

By Maureen

“My name is Harvey Milk, and I am here to recruit you.” At many of his public appearances, the late politician uttered these words. They’re also my words, because I am also here to recruit you . . . to see the film version of Milk’s life, directed by Gus Van Sant.

In Milk, Van Sant gives us an incredibly poignant and moving portrait of a man who was truly ahead of his time. Tired of living his life in the closet in New York, Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) turns forty and decides to move to San Francisco with his much younger new lover Scott Smith (James Franco) and bask in the afterglow of the Summer of Love. Smith and Milk set up house on the Castro, one of the more notorious gay blocks in the city. After a representative of the local merchants’ board harasses Milk for trying to open a camera shop, he decides to run for City Supervisor. This decision and all of the events that follow it comprise the chronology of the film, focusing solely on what would be the final eight years of Harvey Milk’s life.

Sean Penn as Harvey Milk

Although the movie is a biography of this time in Milk’s life and features him in two different relationships, it is not a romantic movie. Milk’s personal life is certainly discussed, but the film balances his life at home with his life as a politician. In the case of Franco’s Smith, these two concepts are inextricably linked, as Smith left Milk when he decided to run for office a third time, saying “[he] just doesn’t have another one in [him].” Smith reappears throughout the film, however, as he maintained a close friendship with Milk even after the end of their romantic relationship.

Franco’s performance is full of nuance, bringing the audience along on Smith’s emotional journey. We rejoice when Harvey cooks him a romantic birthday dinner, we let out a sigh of disappointment when Harvey loses the first election, and we swell with pride when Scott and Harvey embrace, finally able to live openly as a couple. Even when Smith begins dating a new man, the connection between he and Harvey remains intense and intimate. Both actors do incredibly well with the complicated emotional back-and-forth that these characters go through, missing their relationship but still forced apart by Harvey’s political aspirations.

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