Review Tuesday: 'Milk'

Today’s ‘Review Tuesday’. Harvey Milk [1]. He was the first openly gay person elected to public office in the US – when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors [2] – in 1977 at age 47 years. The film Milk [3, 4] documents eight years of Milk’s life – starting at his 40th birthday in May 1970. Despite an at times chaotic personal life, Milk became San Francisco’s – and arguably the US’s, and the world’s – leading gay rights activist. The movie ends with his November 1978 assassination by aggrieved and recently resigned San Francisco Supervisor Dan White. Several of Milk’s friends and fellow gay rights campaigners were consultants in the making of Milk. In Extras interviews on the DVD they complimented the film makers on their success in making the film as authentic as possible. This included casting actors with close physical resemblance to the people they played. And none more so than Sean Penn, who played Milk. What an outstanding actor Penn is. Surely his Harvey Milk’s one of his best performances – if not the best. Without exception the support actors were excellent too. It’s shocking to think Milk turned the tide of gay rights only 32 years ago. I can only imagine how far he may have gone in politics had his premonition that he wouldn’t live to his 50th birthday, not proven correct. I can’t fault Milk. So I must rate it five stars.