Milk

Last night Candace and I saw a movie I had been very hyped about since first seeing trailers for it months ago, Gus van Sant's Milk. The movie is a biopic of Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn), America's first openly gay man elected to public office. Milk served as one of San Francisco's City Supervisor's during the tumultuous coming-of-age era for the gay movement in the city's Castro disctrict, and as such faced much opposition on his way to being elected. Not too long after being elected, Harvey Milk (along with mayor George Moscone) was shot and killed by another City Supervisor, Dan White, who obviously had some issues.

Anyway, the movie was your typical biopic in that it was generally long, dry, and down-to-earth, but it was easily one of the best biopics I've ever seen, and Penn's portrayal of Milk was astounding. It's amazing to think that only 35 years ago our country was rounding up gay men and taking them to jail simply for being gay. We've obviously come a long way since then, but then you're reminded of the recent Proposition 8 fiasco across our country and you see we haven't come as far as we would have hoped.

The worst thing about this movie is that it has come out on limited release, usually just in art houses, and therefore won't be able to help educate on a wider scale, which is a big shame, as this movie is really giving a voice to a whole community that until recently (especially before Brokeback Mountain, and even that can't hold a candle to Milk) had been nearly left out from mainstream media.

Go see this movie...it's great (even if all you think you'll get out of it is an incredible performance by Sean Penn).