With the recent overturning of the rights for gays to marry in the state of California, there couldn’t be a better time for the release of Sean Penns’ latest movie set to hit theaters for Thanksgiving this year. The story of the charismatic San Francisco gay activist and politician of the 1970s, Harvey Milk, gives Penn a showcase for his expertise in his craft.

With a topical subject, a new administration in waiting and a star cast line up, Josh Brolin, Penn, James Franco and Emile Hursch, the movie is set to get temperatures rising, not only among gay couples but human rights activists and those generally interested in politics.
On all accounts the movie is carefully crafted, to cover a huge period time during that time of struggle, the people and the zeitgeist who influenced the subject matter and contains enormous attention to detail.

With the powerful use of black-and-white archival footage in the first few minutes of Milk, which shows California’s cops rousting men covering their faces from gay bars of the ’50s and ’60s, the kind of harassment that led to the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York, all offer a poignant reminder of what was not so many years ago.

Anticipating his death, Milk, makes a tape recording to be played in the event of his death. He had many death threats at that time. The tape is used as narrative to the movie.

In the tape Milk tells the story of his eight years in San Francisco, how he moved there with his lover, Scott Smith, played by Franco, founded a camera shop that became a centre for the gay community and took up activism to become the Mayor Of Castro Street.

ABB