In the wake of Gus van Sant’s necessarily fictionalised biopic of Harvey Milk, the Labia in Cape Town has resurrected The Times of Harvey Milk, the documentary about Milk that won an Oscar in 1984. It’s a welcome opportunity to get some background on Milk; to see what, if anything, Van Sant’s film missed or distorted, and so on.
Of course the best thing would be to have a television channel in South Africa that would screen such a documentary round the time of the release of the feature film. Pity we don’t. And a pity, too, that we don’t have a Labia kind of semi-“repertory” cinema in Jo’burg, but that’s another story.
Rob Epstein’s documentary certainly gives us some background on the Milk story, as well as dealing with the aftermath of his murder in 1978 in a way that the feature film didn’t. Made a few years after Milk was killed, the emotions of those who knew and worked with Milk are still running high in this footage. That’s understandable, and it’s a powerful insight into how much it meant to be the United States’s first openly gay elected official — and how much Milk himself meant to those who followed his lead. It also makes the fact that his killer got a very light sentence (because the jury decided, absurdly, that the crime wasn’t premeditated) feel like a terrible insult.
The testimony of those who knew Milk is presented in traditional talking-heads style, but it’s likely to be riveting for anyone except those whose visual cortices have been frazzled by today’s jittery and overly effects-primped televisual style. In particular, there is the tough old unionist who was impressed by Milk and became a supporter, while admitting that before he actually met Milk he was as casually, violently homophobic as the next working man.
This is as good an argument as any for Milk’s belief (and later that of the gay and lesbian rights movement in general that coming out to family, friends and colleagues is the strongest way to fight homophobia. As Milk put it, once they see we are their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, workmates, it’s harder to hate us and to discriminate against us.
The Times of Harvey Milk
doesn’t go into his love life or sex life. The feature film was criticised for, er, pasteurising that aspect of Milk’s existence, showing his longer-term lovers in quasi-marriage style but ignoring his parallel life of promiscuity. I suppose that wasn’t going to get into a 1984 documentary about him, either, and I suppose we also have to accept that his real-life lover didn’t look quite like James Franco. But then a little reality goes a long way, doesn’t it?