Lost and Found Film Reviews: Gus Van Sant's Milk and Malcolm Ingram's Small Town Gay Bar

Pride Month seemed like the ideal time to revive these Amazon reviews that dropped off the site over the years, since both queer-oriented films are well worth watching.

Milk is one of Gus Van Sant's best films, and I'm still amazed that the counterintuitive casting of Sean Penn pays such dividends. He isn't the first actor who would've come to my mind to play Harvey Milk--and not because Penn is straight, but because his vibe is completely different, whereas his uber-macho posturing in P.T. Anderson's One Battle After Another proved less surprising and led to his third Oscar after Mystic River and Milk.  

Lightly revised from the original text.

MILK 

(Gus Van Sant, USA, 2008, 128 minutes) 

When a famous person, like the nation's first openly gay male city supervisor, inspires an acclaimed book (The Mayor of Castro Street) and an Oscar-winning documentary (The Times of Harvey Milk), a biopic can seem superfluous at best. Taking over from Oliver Stone and Bryan Singer--who were  attached to the project at various points--Gus Van Sant, whose previous motion picture was 2007's lower-budget, more experimental Paranoid Park, directs with such grace, he renders the concern moot. 

Unlike Randy Shilts' Milk biography, which begins at the beginning of his life, Dustin Lance Black's Oscar-winning screenplay starts in 1972, just as Milk (Sean Penn, in a finely-wrought performance) and his boyfriend, Scott (James Franco, equally good), move from New York to San Francisco. Milk opens a camera shop on Castro that becomes a safe haven for victims of discrimination, an experience that convinces him to enter politics.

With each race he runs, Harvey's relationship with Scott unravels further. Finally, he wins, and the real battle begins as Milk takes on Proposition 6, which denies equal rights to homosexuals. He does everything he can to rally local politicians, like George Moscone (Victor Garber) and Dan White (Josh Brolin). 

While Mayor Moscone is willing, conservative board member White has reservations, and after Milk fails to back one of White's pet projects, the die is cast, leading to the murder of two beloved Bay Area figures. 

If Van Sant captures Milk in all his complexities--he was, for instance, a very funny man--Milk also serves as an enticement to grassroots activism, showing how one regular guy elevated everyone around him, notably Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), the ex-street hustler who created the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial. Released in the wake of Proposition 8, California's anti-gay marriage amendment, Milk is inspirational in the best of ways: one person can and did make a difference, though the struggle is far from over. 

SMALL TOWN GAY BAR

(Malcolm Ingram, USA, 2006, 76 minutes)

It's easy for city dwellers to take gay bars for granted, but Bear Nation filmmaker Malcolm Ingram presents the other side of the picture. Social opportunities are considerably more limited for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals in rural America. With production assistance from Kevin Smith, Ingram focuses on several communities in Mississippi. 

While some gay-themed documentaries are depressing and others inspiring, Small Town Gay Bar is a bit of both. Rick Gladish, for instance, owner of Rumors nightclub in Shannon, created an oasis for the local LGBTQ community, but remains closeted from his Pentecostal parents. Scotty Weaver, on the other hand, was open about his sexual orientation. And brutally murdered because of it (Ingram speaks with Weaver's family).

As Gladish notes, "As far as being gay in Mississippi, it's hard, it's very hard." Proof comes in the form of Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, who states categorically, "God hates fags." Other subjects include patrons, bartenders, drag performers, and strippers. In addition, Ingram looks back on bars that have closed over the years, which lends his debut documentary a nostalgic air, though he concludes with new beginnings for two of them. 

Small Town Gay Bar isn't as heart-wrenching as Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning or Daniel G. Karslake's For the Bible Tells Me So, which cover similar territory, but that doesn't make its voices any less valuable--and a soundtrack filled with Canadian alternative acts like the Hidden Cameras and Broken Social Scene is a nice touch. Extra features include unbridled commentary from Ingram and chats with Smith and editor Scott Mosier.

Images from the IMDb (Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, and James Franco in Milk), Netflix (Small Town Gay Bar), and Filthy Dreams (Rumors, R.I.P.).