At Long Last, Milk

Some friends dropped in before I could start watching Milk, so I ended up not watching it until nearly midnight. Hence this late night/early morning post about the movie, while it's still fresh in my mind.

First of all, I'm now very relieved that I didn't get a chance to see it in the theatre, since I ended up crying my eyes out at various parts. Not even just at the parts I expected to feel emotional about, either, like Harvey's assassination, but also during the marches and the scenes of the community coming together for the first time ever. It was just really powerful and moving.

I read The Mayor of Castro Street three or four months ago and it really opened my eyes to a lot about Harvey Milk that I didn't know, even after watching the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk a couple of years back. Things like all the years he'd spent as a closeted New York Republican, for instance. A lot of what the movie included probably would have surprised me if I hadn't read that book first. As it was, all I could think about was how true to everything I'd read they were being with the film.

While I was reading the book I bascially cried through a lot of the final chapters, but there was one moment earlier on in the book that really affected me. I hadn't thought about that moment being repeated in the movie for some reason, but there it was and seeing it played out on the screen was almost as hard as reading about it.

I'm talking about the scene where the teen from Minnesota calls Harvey and tells him that he's going to kill himself because his parents are going to send him away to be 'cured'. Harvey urges him to get on a bus or a train and make his way to a big city instead and the kid says that he can't get on a bus, he can't run away: he's in a wheel chair.

Reading that in the book, I had to put it down for several minutes and cry. The image is just so tragic and heart wrenching and so hopeless. But, in the book as in the movie, Harvey later heard from the kid, who'd managed to find a way to take Harvey's advice and get away.

That story, for me, really sums up everything Harvey Milk is about. I know it was the tag line to the movie, so I'm not exactly original in saying this, but Harvey was all about giving people hope and he's still doing so over thirty years after his murder.

The thing is, Harvey didn't give people hope that things would just change and get better. His kind of hope wasn't the 'This too shall pass' kind. He gave them hope that they themselves could change things, could change the world we live in. What I mean is, he didn't just give them something to believe in so much as he helped them to believe in themselves and in the LGBT community coming together for the first time in history as a major movement.

I can't remember the first time I heard the name Harvey Milk. I really wish I could, but by that point, I was already reading a lot about LGBT culture and history, taking in a lot of things at once. I have no recollection of learning of his story, though I know I heard of it on my own, long after my public school days were over.

I remember being a lost and confused kid figuring out that I was gay and having very little to look towards in terms of role models, or even just to feel less alone in the world. It would have made a world of difference, I think, if I'd known the story of Harvey Milk then.

I think that's one of the greatest things about this film. It has brought Harvey Milk back to mainstream attention, where he should have been all along. He's a civil rights hero as much as he is a gay hero, but tons of gay kids are going to know his story now. We need that, we need to keep our history alive.

As for the film itself, I though everything was perfect. The cast was amazing, the script was entirely deserving of the Oscar that Dustin Lance Black won for it, the way they recreated the era was so painstakingly well done. It's really a masterpiece of a biopic and a beautifully done film. I really wish it had won the Oscar for Best Picture. I haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire, but I think Milk is everything film should be.

Reading back what I've written, I think I'm coming off like someone who cries constantly, and I swear I'm not! It's just that certain subject matter really gets to me and this era is one of those things. It's the idea of this huge movement coming together for the first time, the new freedom and equality they were fighting for, winning, and enjoying, and us knowing in retrospect that AIDS was lurking just around the corner and would destroy so much of it. The idea of it literally haunts me at times.

Not long after reading The Mayor of Castro Street, I actually had a dream where I was somehow in the 70's myself and I'd met this guy that I really liked, but I knew that I had to go, that I was going to be pulled back to the present at any second, and I was urgently trying to convince him before I left that he had to start using condoms and getting other people to do so, too. It probably sounds silly, but in the dream I was so desperately trying to make him understand what was coming, what the near future had in store, and I couldn't. I failed. When I woke up, it really felt in those first few moments of consciousness that I really had been there, and that I really had blown my chance to warn them. It was a terrible feeling.

But, I digress. Seeing Milk, in spite of the tragic way things ended for Harvey, didn't depress me. It truly isn't a film about the end of one life, but about the beginning of something that continues to this day and gets stronger all the time. I'm so glad I finally got to see the movie and I'll be buying my own copy very soon.