Movie Crush Monday: Little C and Milk
Happy Monday readers. Last week CT talked about the fun Cohen Brothers comedy, Hail Ceasar. I was looking at the cast and suddenly realized that it was the first time in a long time that I enjoyed a Josh Brolin movie. Not because he's not talented, not because he makes bad movies. It's been a long time since I like a Josh Brolin movie because of how much the movie Milk affected me.
Milk is the story of Harvey Milk, a gay activist who became California's first openly gay elected official. The story, as written by Dustin Lance Black who is himself openly gay, is this quiet and beautiful portrait of a man trying to change his corner of the world. It doesn't fall into the trap of so many autobiographies of trying to make Harvey seem perfect or trying to cover his whole life. Watching this movie, you feel like you get to know the core of who this guy was and why people still strive to remember him so many years after his death.
This movie came out after I had just started college. I remember going to see it by myself at the theater halfway across Phoenix because it wasn't playing anywhere closer. I knew it was going to be a little hard to watch. As a part of the LGBT+ community, these stories always hit me hard. I struggled for so long feeling like an outsider, feeling like the world as a whole would never accept me for who I really was. So much of that struggle that almost all LGBT+ people go though is portrayed in this film. You see Harvey go into the election campaign for city council with many of the people around him assuming that he will lose because that is a mindset that the world has conditioned them to. But they fight anyway. By the time the credits rolled in the theater I was ugly crying so hard that one of the ushers came over and asked if I was okay. Thank you, random theater employee. I'm an emotional basket case, but sure I'm fine.
Special kudos must go to the supporting cast of this film. Diego Luna, Alison Pill, and yes even Josh Brolin. Mr. Brolin plays Dan White, the man who assassinated Harvey Milk. Dan White is portrayed, as a frustrated family man who's achievements never quite meet his ambitions, and as such I was forced to sympathize with a character that would have been so much easier and more satisfying to think of just as a monster. It's a credit to the cumulative efforts of the script, the portrayal and the direction that this character was so hard for me to watch that it effectively ruined Josh Brolin for me for years.
Alright, we are off on an adventure that I can't tell you about till later. Probably Wednesday for my post.
Happy watching,
Little C
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