"Milk": A Love Story

Pause now to consider: we're half an hour or so into a political epic, and we've spent most of it watching two men fall in love. We've seen them kiss, have sex, and goof around with a Super-8 camera. But it's not true that the movie's political side has yet to reveal itself, because when you're a minority defined by whom you love, falling in love is political.

This is the line Milk brilliantly walks, telling a love story that's really about politics in a movie that's a political history that's all about falling in love. Don't try to disentangle the two threads; it's impossible.

Besides, why would you want to? The politics of kissing make for some beautiful and thought-provoking cinema. When Scott and Harvey open their little camera store, one of the old-time Irish and Italian Catholic merchants in their neighborhood threatens them that the local police will pull their business license if they open up to do business.

Scott gets angry, and says they're not breaking any laws. The man doesn't care. God's law or man's, the local cops enforce them both, he tells them.

After he leaves, Scott sits on the window ledge of their new store, all his anger gone. Harvey drops to his knees on the sidewalk and tenderly, gently kisses him, in front of everyone, as the camera pulls back for a long, lingering shot. It's the embrace of two men who love each other, and of comfort, but as the camera pulls back, and back again, we realize something else: that kiss was an act of defiance.

Two men in love confronting society's condemnation with action instead of angst? This is definitely not Brokeback Mountain. When Scott is beaten by a cop during a raid on a Castro St. bar, Harvey doesn't wring his hands and tell him to be more careful; he patches up Scott's laceration, kisses him on the forehead, and suggests they start a revolution. He decides to start by running for city supervisor, with Scott as his campaign manager.

James Franco, the actor who portrayed Scott Smith, sees that as one of the film's greatest strengths. "Obviously, this movie has a lot to do with gay rights and in the political realm," he said in an interview the day after the film premiered in San Francisco. "But one of the things I like best is the way the relationship between Scott and Harvey is presented. There's no drama about, 'Oh, we're two men, how can we be together.' It's just presented like any heterosexual relationship would be presented in a mainstream movie. You don't see a ton of movies where a gay relationship is presented like that."

The film's romantic storyline benefits from the fact that Franco and Sean Penn, who plays Harvey, have some amazing chemistry. It's evident from their first flirtation in the subway, and it's a big part of what gives the kiss in the street outside the camera store its emotional punch. They banter and bicker, fight and make love.

On Scott's birthday, Harvey makes a romantic candlelight dinner, then smashes a pie tin full of whipped cream in his face. They chase each other all around the apartment, laughing and tickling each other, smeared in whipped cream, until they end up in bed. Even after Scott moves out and they both have other lovers, they never move far out of each other's orbits and their friends never give up trying to make them realize they belong together.

Penn said that chemistry was born of genuine affection between the actors. "When you work with actors like this, when you've run across each other before," he said, "whatever the story is, it's giving you a structure for the predisposed closeness that you feel with your colleagues, who you respect and like. And so a lot of it just forms itself through whatever the script is."

It didn't hurt that Penn fell a little bit in love with Harvey himself. "What struck me, really, was that Harvey Milk, whether he'd been in politics or not, would have been a political figure simply because he was one of these people who had come up against the various obstacles in life and greeted them with such courage and warmth," Penn said. "He was politically kind, a kind spirit and that was going to be strong whatever he did. And so I tried to follow … the flow of my increasing affection for Harvey Milk the more I got to know him."