The Times of Harvey Milk

Winner of a Best Documentary Oscar, this portrait of Harvey Milk, California's first openly gay public official, who was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone, in 1978 by clean-cut Dan White, one of Milk's fellow board members badly unable to cope with the changing times is a sympathetic portrait both of the man and the contemporary political and social climate in San Francisco.

Whilst of course the times have a-changed and being gay is no longer an issue (at least publicly) this was due to the people like Milk who devoted themselves to the cause they believed in unstintingly. As such, this an interesting historical document although had the makers had a more thorough-going journalistic approach, particularly in relation to the White trial and the Californian justice system this would have given the film more depth.

 

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