The Times of Harvey Milk 1984

I just finished watching The Times of Harvey Milk and I struggle to find the right words to express how amazing this documentary is.

Focusing on Harvey Milk in the context of San Francisco and California in the 1970's, this film is as much about the gay community as it is about Milk himself.

Yet it captures Milk's passion without portraying him as a saint. He has temper tantrums, he lacks patience at times, but he calls on ALL of us, gay or straight, as members of the human condition, to make our world a better place. He calls us to see the links between the oppression of gays, asians, blacks, women, the poor, etc and challenges us to rise up in our own communities and fight for every one of these causes because it is the right thing to do.

The film is exquisitely made, using photographs, news reports, radio broadcasts, and interviews with Milk's friends and political cohorts. It reaches down into you and tears at your heart, it enrages you when White doesn't really get the full brunt of the law, and it inspires you with that most difficult of things... hope.

I didn't know a lot about the murder of San Francisco Board of Supervisor Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. At that time I was too busy raising my sons and wasn't politically minded at that time of my life. I wanted to learn more about this incident so I saw this movie.

Dan Brown (another supervisor) resigned from his position. Family, friends and supporters said he shouldn't have done that and he asked for his job back. When he heard he probably wouldn't be reinstated he killed them. He had a gun and bullets in his pockets. Yet a jury let him get away with pretty much a slap on the hand. He served only five years incarcerated. His defense was he was under pressure and eating too much junk food. The Twinkie Defense. As people said in the film, if he only assassinated Mayor George Moscone instead of also killing Harvey Milk (who was gay), he would have done hard time.

One of the faults I suppose of the jury system is that since it is a jury of your peers is that sometimes they will let you get away with a "hate crime". I feel that's is what happened in the OJ trail. I wish this could be fixed somehow.

Robert Epstein and Richard Schmiechen have crafted an eloquent and touching documentary that brings to life a historically important political figure in our nation's history: Harvey Milk, the first openly gay public elected official in San Francisco. Milk, together with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, were assassinated in November 1978.

The film does not concentrate on a biographical portrait of Milk, but instead focuses on the eleven months he served as San Francisco supervisor. It brings life to history, albeit recent history, a quality that is lacking in so many historical documentaries. What makes this possible, in many ways, is the ample news footage that was available to trace the events that comprised those eleven months, and the personal commentary provided by witnesses and participants of the events documented. The additional footage and audio commentary that comprises this 2-DVD set sheds more light on the Harvey Milk legacy. Milk was a politician by nature, much in the same way as John Kennedy was, but without the money. It shows how much a charasmatic figure can accomplish when the mission seems clear. Milk's humor, candor, and intelligence shines through.

I first saw this film in the late 1980s on public television, and saw it a few times since. Watching it today, what shocked me the most is that Dan White, who served a little more than five years for the slayings, received no psychiatric treatment while incarcerated. White's defense attorney stated quite clearly in news footage that White was a suicide risk the day the verdict was announced. White killed himself less than two years after his release. I am clearly no apologist for Dan White, but he was failed by the very system that awarded him his freedom a scant five years after killing two men.

Milk was elected to public office in the few years after the notion of the "personal is political" became popular. Milk exemplified and capitalized on this notion brilliantly. What Milk's legacy shows me, today, is that personal authenticity is the most essential quality needed in our public officials. Integrity and intelligence springs from authenticity, as does clarity of purpose. And a sense of wit and humor is the second most essential quality. Milk possessed both.

P.S.: I thought of this after I originally posted my review. Milk was assassinated a few short years before the AIDS epidemic emerged as a public health threat within, and outside of, the gay community. Had Milk been on the scene at the time, I have no doubt he would have used his office and political power to the greatest extent possible to affect legislation and government accountibility in their response to the epidemic. His death really altered the course of history.

That Harvey Milk's election to the San Francisco city council made him the first openly gay elected official in the country certainly justifies this documentary look at his life and career. The fact that this political event coincides with the ascendancy of Anita Bryant, the Moral Majority, and California's controversial Proposition 6 (which sought to make it illegal to employ any gay person as a teacher in the state's public school systems) gives the film a nail-biting second act. But add the fact that Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by fellow council person Dan White, and you have a riveting truth is stranger than fiction psycho-political drama. The scenes and remembrances of the spontaneous candlelight march from the Castro to City Hall by thousands of citizens are moving and speak of a grief and loss that goes deeper than words. The film goes on to document the Dan White trial, the "Twinkie Defense", and the violent reaction to verdict. Unfortunately, you can't view the film today without realizing that at the time these interviews were being filmed, AIDS was already invisibly working its way through the community and would soon all but wipe out this generation of gay men in San Francisco. That's a different story, I know (see Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt ), but it's like watching happy passengers board the Titanic, talking about a future that you know will never happen for many of them.

The docu tells Milks story. It's touching and insightful. A piece of San Francisco's history in this 80+ minute movie. I was impressed and I learned a lot. It's well deserving of its Oscar.