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Dose of Arts and Culture
November 23, 2008
Aside from being one of the only movies charting the complex political struggles of the gay community and that Sean Penn gave one of the best performances by any actor in decades, it seems to me that the real miracle of the film MILK is its simple R- rating. You've come a long way, baby!
Unlike the Academy Award Winner, Brokeback Mountain, MILK is not a story about the tribulations of coming out of the closet or the nagging questions about one's own sexuality. MILK is unabashedly about confirmed gayness, politics and lifestyle. Homosexuality is not its narrative's ultimate destination, it is the film's point of departure.
It is the overt gay sexuality of the film that I found intriguing. Director Gus Van Sant seems to be saying, if you don't like to see two men kissing, having sex and expressing love for each other in the same way as do heterosexuals, the "Exit" sign is lit up in the front of the theater. Use it... now back to our feature presentation ...
In short, Harvey Milk was the first openly gay person to run, win and hold an elected office in the State of California. Voted into the office of Supervisor and holding the office a brief 11 months, it was Milk's continuous string of election defeats, expert community organizing, bold personality and passionate political platform that made him famous. Having run for office under gerrymandered San Francisco districts that disempowered the gay community in the city's Castro section, Milk found it difficult to gain enough electoral support to win an election. Finally, the re-ordering of the city's district's which permitted both the Haight and the Castro to elect their own representative worked in Harvey Milk's favor. He was elected to the office of Supervisor in 1978.
The
political intricacies of the city ordinances that discriminated against
the gay community are well developed in the film. As well is the
tension between the gay community and the police. Van Sant also
incorporates old reels of Anita Bryant, the orange juice spokeswoman
turned anti-gay Christian evangelist. But, what I thought
was most thoughtful about the film was its willingness to permit his
characters to express the varying perspectives of being out of the
closet that many gay people face. The film deftly reveals the the
painful political and social intricacies of "living straight" versus gay
and the sacrifices inherent in both.
At the Producer's Guild of America's screening of the movie in New York City this past week, Van Sant told the audience of film industry professionals that one of his goals was not to make the movie about the specific decisions surrounding living a homosexual lifestyle. Instead, he sought to make such issues incidental to the larger political themes of Proposition 6 and the rise and fall of the Great Harvey Milk. He also brought a love story between Harvey Milk and his longtime partner Scott Smith, played incredibly thoughtfully by James Franco, worthy of Romeo and Juliet, to the fore in his film. The relationship themes were not obvious ones, propped up around a stilted view of being gay, but they were ones to which anyone with a heart can relate.
When asked by a producer in the audience why the story of Harvey Milk had not been made sooner, Van Sant and other members of the cast mused that perhaps "Hollywood is not as comfortable with homosexuality as it pretends to be." And, that in the "not -so -back- in -the- day" past, his film would have received an X-rating or the dreaded NC-17, the kiss of death at the box office.
Historically, movies with gay themes between women have been more likely to receive an R-rating than those about male homosexuality. The film Henry and June (1990) was the first to receive an NC-17 rating, due to the sex scene between the two female leads. However, Kundera's book turned cult classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being, was one of the first films with openly gay sexual themes to receive an R-rating. But this was a foreign film and was regarded as art-house-y.
Regardless, I don't think that that any film to date has treated gay male sexuality with such joy and openness. The ridiculously fantastic acting and storyline were at play here, softening what was a particularly graphic portrayal of gay male intimacy asserted by the film. All for an R-rating, no less.
During the PGA's Q and A of the film's cast members and director, there was also an agreement that straight actor, Sean Penn, pushed the envelope on the film, with a real willingness to "go there" in terms of connecting with his co-stars sexually and intimately.
Overall, the R-rating on this film seems like an obstacle has been transcended. It conveys that there is likely some raised level of acceptance of homosexuality inside and outside Hollywood which would foster a movie rating that permits the film to generate revenue at the box office, the most important element of success these days. This can be positively construed as a message that all kinds of people will come out to see MILK, thereby making other movies in the future with similar themes that much more likely to get financed and distributed.
