Milk (Gus van Sant, 2008) and The Times of Harvey Milk (Rob Epstein, 1984)

I go back and forth on Gus van Sant, and the existence of what must be at least two Gus van Sants doesn't help me untangle the matter. One Gus van Sant is the visionary behind such bold, aesthetically distinctive films as Gerry, Elephant (my second-favorite of 2003, after Lost in Translation) and, so I've heard, last year's Paranoid Park. The other Gus van Sant is the hack, he of such non-notables as Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester and To Die For. (There's probably a nuttier third clone running around somewhere; you know, the one who made Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and then remade Psycho shot-for shot.)

All my fingers were crossed in hopes that Good van Sant would land Milk and bring a much-needed stylistic shakeup to the staid semi-biopic genre, but Bad van Sant must have made the more convincing pitch, as, alas, he's clearly in the driver's seat. Would that it could at least have been a joint venture between Good van Sant and Bad van Sant, but no. At least Good van Sant wasn't barred entirely from the production; there are certain scenes and shots for which I'd swear he was riding shotgun. Should've jumped the console, though. Should've grabbed the wheel when Bad van Sant was busy foreshadowing.

Not that Milk falls victim to all — or even most — of the usual pitfalls of the recent-history dramatization. It doesn't suffer the obligation to grind through Harvey Milk's entire life — though, on the blade's other side, it does suffer from a conspicuous lack of the man in full — and it doesn't succumb to much of the classic temptation to wedge real events into a community-college-screenwriting-class story framework. The film does indulge in such vices as groan-inducingly unsubtle musical cues, repeated shots of a glowering Dan White and a structure like a life's "Greatest Hits" compilation, though, so there's a bit of a Janus act going on nonetheless.

But it's not a shoddy product. I just couldn't shake the notion that disturbed me throughout: what could the movie have been had the Gus van Sant who helmed Elephant taken control? I can't imagine any result that isn't stunning: no matter what, it'd be an extraordinary story told with an extraordinary look and feel. As it is, Bad van Sant's Milk swerves well around crappiness, but the what-could've-been factor saddens.

(You've surely heard this by now, but I suppose journalistic integrity demands I note that Sean Penn does a near-flawless job portraying Milk. They're not dead ringers, but he certainly does the voice right. The appearance-matching is actually pretty striking across the board; Josh Brolin looks more like Dan White than Dan White did. And, in one of the most inspired casting choices I've seen in a very long time indeed, Art Agnos is portrayed by none other than Jeff Koons.)

Watching the feature version of Harvey Milk's political career gave me the impetus to do the same to the documentary version, Rob Epstein's 1984 The Times of Harvey Milk. Viewing the two films in this atypical order, I was surprised to notice how much of the documentary's footage was recreated to the detail in van Sant's movie, right down to an unusual font on a parade banner that, as a production element in Milk, I suspected of anachronism.

I came away from Epstein's documentary with the same feeling I had after van Sant's feature: broad satisfaction with small, irritating sprinkles of disappointment. Having been recommended the documentary so frequently and so strongly by various cinéaste pals, I suppose I expected more, stylistically, from it as well. It's a thoroughly-researched, solidly-constructed piece of non-fiction film and it benefits from the additional immediacy of having been made six years, rather than three decades, after the events in question. But it's bolted together out of factory doc components — interviews, contemporary footage, narration (by the nonstandard Harvey Fierstein) — and they're not bolted in a particularly distinctive arrangement, either.

It's just occurred to me that I've said a bit about form and style, but next to nothing about content of these films. Since they're based on real events, I figure discussing said events would be superfluous. (I've actually heard a few people assert that they "don't need" to see Milk because they "already know what happened," an excuse that doesn't even hold water for fiction films, but c'mon, nobody's in the theater to find out what happened to Harvey Milk.) But if you don't know and have, for some reason, read this far, allow me to introduce you to my good friend Wikipedia.

The movie did bring out two elements of the story to which I'd never given much thought before. First, Milk's earlyish scenes show the man's first few failed bids for public office. He's met with a lot of dismissive upward puffs of air, even from his neighbors in the Castro: many don't understand why he'd run with hardly a chance of winning, and when he focuses on the Castro itself, they assume the area's inconsequentially small and thus worthless political terrain. But Milk holds his line: maybe the Castro's small, he grants, and maybe I'm not well known, but the Castro is a place to start and a even a lost election is a place — the place, really — to begin a political career. The sentiment resonates with my own developing thoughts on how to get things done. (As with many hoary aphorisms, "You gotta start somewhere" hides a valuable truth under all that dust.)

Second: damn, how times have changed. A large chunk of Milk recreates the fight against the Briggs Initiative — a section that works in more than one of Milk's well-known one-liners — and the attempts of Milk and co. to sway public opinion against it. The lightbulb all but materializes over Milk's head: why not inform voters that gays aren't aberrations huddled in the shadows, but actual people that they personally know? Evidently knowing a homosexual was a total and utter novelty to many back then, but nowadays I can go through a day interacting, if I so choose, mostly with out gay people. I suppose Milk was right; that bullet really did destroy a lot of closet doors.