Harvey Milk. I must admit that I didn't know about him until the trailers for this film began to appear. Perhaps that's because I'm from Orange County, California, where one could easily guess that knowledge of him was suppressed into the ground and kept away from our little innocent minds. I had heard a little about the "Twinkie Defense", but just in passing, a blip in the civics book.Gus Van Sant. One of my favorite directors, with "My Own Private Idaho" as my top pick of his films, until now.
This film, "Milk", feels important to me, it spoke to me, it almost feels like Harvey Milk spoke through the film to those of us affected by the recent, and closely paralleled, proposition struggle in California. It's as if he knew this was going to happen and he's telling us his message, that same message that helped defeat Prop 6. His soul was in it, right there in the celluloid.
The cast, who bear a striking similarity to the actual people they portray, was phenomenal, Penn, especially.
I fully expect to see this film snag a few Oscars.
