Milk

The Gay Struggle Personified
Gus Van Sant has always been an excellent if somewhat eclectic director. Although I have enjoyed his previous efforts, I was somewhat apprehensive when I heard he was undertaking a film biography of Harvey Milk. A gay figure of this importance, I thought, should be handled by someone a little more mainstream. Like many gay people, I am weary of gay-themed films that reach no one beyond a gay audience, and the message I would want to emerge from a film about Harvey Milk should be heard by everyone.

As if reading my mind, Mr. Van Sant has fashioned a film that is accessible to all, while approaching his subject with sharp focus and a singleness of purpose that is at once definitive and topical. A stunning achievement, MILK manages to make its point without ever being preachy or trite, while remaining as true to the facts as any film bio could ever hope to be.

The film opens with snippets of gay history that many young gay people, let alone a straight audience,...

A story that will teach tolerance
The movie portrays a brave man.The movie "Milk" showed that any man who stands by his principles, will always leave a lesson to be learned.

The advances that the Gay communities of California have made in the past 30 years started with the Harvey Milk story.I have been a San Francisco Police officer for 24 years.I am proud to have known a few very brave S.F.P.D. officers who happen to have been gay.

In this state,the advances made for gay people for their civil rights and equal rights,begin with the Milk story.

I was in the movie and I played a real police officer at a homicide scene.The murder of Robert Hillsbough. The hates crimes committed against gays in this city back in the 1970's were over the top.
I was honored to have, done my simple scene with Sean Penn.

I was honored to have been a member of that cast.Check out the cast on the web [...]

I know the damages that Dan White caused our city,and my Department.
It...

Excellent
Allow me to agree with at least one other reviewer that everyone should see this, especially those who think being gay is so far out of the mainstream that, as my father in law once said, "The Lord allowed AIDS to happen."

Harvey Milk. A man of whom I know little. I lived on the other side of the world when he died, in a city in which it was not unusual to run into eunuchs. I'd heard of him since, in reference to gayness, but never associated any importance to him. Then I saw that Sean Penn was playing Milk, so I told my spouse that we need to see it.

Milk, it seemed, lived a pretty conventional lifestyle, working for an insurance company in New York. According to the script, anyway, in 1970 he met a flame and they headed to the west coast. Despite local resistance, they set up shop in the Castro district of San Francisco (after "The Haight" had become riddled with crime, homelessness and the like). Milk then decided it was time to get politically active...

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