Milk (movie review - BARF ALERT)

Daily Dish column - The Atlantic ^ | 27 November 2008 | Andrew Sullivan

[DestinyEagle]

(Excerpted)

And so this movie was really about two gay men and the journey between them. The two gay men are Harvey Milk and Dan White. The two gay men are Barney Frank and Ted Haggard. The two gay men are Tony Kushner and Larry Craig. The two gay men are Frank Kameny and Roy Cohn. And as the years have passed by and HIV churned the gay world as powerfully as plagues and wars often do, these polarities were complemented by any number of variations in between.

(...)

This is not easy for anyone, let alone for homosexuals. For many across the centuries, it has been too much. Dan White, for one, could not reconcile the tensions. He either had to be totally normal or completely other. And the over-powering self-hatred this tension created drove him to murderous rage at the freedom and integration he couldn't find for himself. And parts of the gay community couldn't reconcile these tensions either (though without stooping to White's violence) and resorted to pure rage and escapist pathologies as a way to cope. Our job now is to see the humanness of both stories and to build and integrate through them to something better and stronger and calmer. It is to leave neither White nor Milk behind.

(...)

He was a man of the streets and yet he also had to become a symbol of establishment power. The scene when he both stokes a rally-cum-riot and then calms it down captured the tension perfectly. He was a man of politics, but he was also only a politician in order to have the chance to be a human.

(...)

Which is why, in so many ways, the gay movement, at its very best, is something holy.

[Borges]

Robin Williams isn’t in this film according to the IMDB. Did you mean Sean Penn?

[GSWarrior]

[dilvish]

I saw a preview for this the same day I saw a preview for the Nixon interview movie. They were both so painfully boring I almost fell asleep waiting for the movie.

[Tenniel2]

Moscone. White shot Mayor George Moscone, not the vastly more popular Mayor Joe Alioto.

[Wacka]

You’re right. I did a job right across from Alioto’s law office a few weeks ago and the name stuck in my head. The convention center is named after Moscone.

[Captain Peter Blood]

Please tell me what is “Holy” about two men engaged in sex?
Sullivan must be musing whimsy about his time with Plato and Aristotle in Athens when things were much simpler.
“Milk” will be the season's biggest bomb in more ways than one.
I read that Sean Penn wrote in an explicit sex scene with himself and one of the costars of the film.
Sean I think you have discovered your true self here, run with it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ssaftler]

Andrew, my main problem with Sean Penn playing Harvey Milk, as it is with Tom Cruise playing Claus von Stauffenberg in “Valkyrie”, is that the whole point of either movie is that you’re supposed to be sad when the lead dies.

The main difference is that von Stauffenberg died for attempting to do something CONSTRUCTIVE for the world.

[Tublecane]

Why is it that just because you’re gay you have to advocate the cultural acceptance of homosexuality? Everyone has their aberrant behaviors. Some of us hide them. If you don’t want to face opprobrium, I suggest you hide yours. If you can’t stomach keeping secrets, I suggest you get used to opprobrium. The world does not exist to accept you.

[Darkwolf377]

Did you mean Sean Penn?

No, I'm just brain damaged--Williams was going to be in this movie when they tried to make it years ago.

But Penn is just as insufferable.

[Borges]

Williams would truly be insuffrable in this role. Whatever Penn’s politics he can be great when he throws the mannerisms in the trash.