Milk

One of the pet cinematic theories I've been working on is the following: the more postmodern the subject of a movie is, the more it can employ classical narrative techniques and structures.

Milk seems to be a perfect test of this argument. The subject here is the struggle for homosexual civil rights in San Francisco in 1970s, led by the title character. You can hardly get farther away from the pre-1960s subject matter than that.

Consequently, one might expect Gus Van Sant's biopic to fall back on classical forms, and indeed it does, to a such a heavy degree that I have not seen anything like it in a long time.

Certainly it employs classical Hollywood structure. For example, when Dan White, the assassin, makes his first appearance on screen, I looked down at my watch and noted that it was precisely at the forty-five minute mark, exactly where you'd expect it.

But the movie goes back farther, to classical operatic tragedy (specifically by invoking Tosca as a metaphor), and by extension, to classical Greek tragedy. The main character is truly a tragic hero is the Aristotlean sense. He is a "great man" whose flaw, a blindness of his character, leads to his downfall.

What is the source of his tragic downfall? It is obviously not that he is a homosexual in a time of repression. This is not a "flaw" that springs from hubris. Rather the flaw, as I read it, was Milk's intolerance of his former closeted self.

In his fight against the repressive Proposition 6 in 1978, Milk became the prophet of "coming out," urging all gays to tell their family members and co-workers of their orientation on the grounds that if a straight person personally knew a gay person, they would never vote to take away gay rights.

Milk sees Dan White (the eventual assassin, played by Josh Brolin) as possibly closeted, and suggests it is very reason for White's conservative intolerance. White is no Iago, however, and Brolin makes him highly sympathetic. White tries repeatedly to reach out to Milk, attempting to find common ground both politically and personally, and each time Milk rejects him with increasing intolerance. At first it is only jovial, as Milk makes arguably inappropriate remarks at the christening of White's son. As time goes on, Milk's rejection of White becomes increasingly angry and obstinate.

The key scene is at Milk's forty-eighth birthday party, where a drunken White attempts to tell Milk how much he has learned from the gay supervisor (about what specifically, we never learn). Milk's rejection of White in this moment is an exact parallel to the scene at the beginning of the film, in the New York Subway on Milk's fortieth birthday, which effectively was Milk's own coming out as he kisses his future partner Scotty (James Franco) in public.

Milk is thus repressing his own former repression, and because of this, he can extend White no sympathy at all, even as he jovially debates with the conservative fundamentalists who are behind Proposition 6. That particular ballot initiative was about depriving gays of their livelihood, yet when it comes to White's own salary, Milk will not take a harmless political risk to help White support his family. In his taped monologue made shortly before his death, Milk states "you have to give them hope," yet he denies all such hope to White in regard to getting back his job as supervisor.

The cement that makes this tragedy is the linking of this flaw to the actual "greatness" of the man as an actor on the stage of history. One can hardly imagine Milk to achieved what he did, without having had this particular flaw. This makes his downfall an inevitable consequence of his rise, once the hand of fickle fate is introduced to put White on the supervisor board beside him.

In some ways, this felt like it could have been written by Shakespeare. I have no idea if this is really what happened between these men, but that's not the point. It was an absolutely brilliant way to tell a story about the downfall of a great man, while also telling an entertaining story about an important episode of history.

I saw Milk in Worcester at the Showcase Cinema and it was completely packed, mostly with older couples. I wonder if this movie will ever get to break out in a larger release. I've read that at least one of the major theater chains is refusing to show it because of its subject matter. I guess classical tragedy is still potent in 2008.

One final note: Anita Bryant appears in the movie as her actual self, in film footage from the time. This was a wise move by Van Sant, since there is not an actress alive today who could possibly capture the malevolent psychopathic gleam in Bryant's eyes as she speaks about God's laws and homosexuality.