Milk (the movie)

I know there is some discussion of this on the movies thread, but since this is likely to be nominated for best picture, I think it's worthy of its own.

It's not a perfect film, and I don't think it deserves to win best picture, although I have to say, it made me remember many of the reasons why I really like Gus Van Sant as a director when he's directing a good script. (Although some of it was a bit too cute for its own good.) There really aren't any spoilers here, since the whole thing is pretty much history. But there is this one scene, right after Harvey gets word that they've got enough votes to defeat Proposition 6 -- which stated that teachers not only could be fired on account of their sexuality, but would be fired -- that Sean Penn plays so perfectly, if it doesn't move you as a human being, you have a heart of stone.

It's such an uplifting, beautiful, moment of naked joy; he's yelling and people around him are going nuts, and you can't even really hear what he's saying, but it was for me, the best acting in the entire film. (A lot of people will cite the cutesy scenes with James Franco and creme pie, but for me it was that five second celebration.) Because there is a sadness to it too. Here are people who weren't even asking for the right to be married; they just wanted the right to not be fired or called perverts and pedophiles for living their lives. How anyone could be so cowardly as to deny another human being those rights, I'll never understand.

Bill O'Reilly is already bitching about how Penn is going to win Best Actor because Hollywood wants to get revenge for the passage of Prop 8. And I'm sure some people who cannot be bothered to see this film will make a similar claim on this website.

They're wrong.

Penn deserves it because in that moment, he was so full of life, so much of a window into Milk's soul, if I had been alone in the theater, I think I would have buried my face in my hands and wept.

You can believe me, or you can read The Jones' endorsement here. But see it.

http://www.esquire.com/features/the-screen/sean-penn-as-harvey-milk-1208

 

This movie already has its own thread.

 

Just like Brokeback Mountain was going to sweep a few years ago, right?

Hollywood is always liberal, until it's time to prove it. Then it's as conservative as the hick idiots to whom O'Reilly caters.

 

Well, I look forward to the great social/international relations liberal nitwit Sean Penn doing a heart-twitching movie on the life of his former buddy, Saddam Hussein.

 

Hmmm. I remember Bobblehead taking great joy in Brokeback's defeats.

Interesting.

 

Who? What? How? When?

 

Goddamn.

 

Jones' review was fucking brilliant. Not pussycat brilliant, but brilliant.

 

Milk ... the other white meat. {/yawn}

 

Precisely.

Ledger and Brokeback are among the most egregious Academy snubs in my lifetime.

 

Utterly exceptional work again from the genius with the simple name.

 

I just hope they use the Dead Kennedy's version of I Fought the Law, which is about the Milk shootings.

And did Robin Williams already make a movie about Harvey Milk? Too lazy to look it up right now.