A film that came out just a bit too late
Dec 02, 2008 in politics
I went to a preview screening of Gus Van Sant’s Milk a few weeks ago (it was a great film, Sean Penn will likely get another Oscar odd, and probably few other people too. I’m looking at you James Franco!).
Yes, it’s a sad film. But it also gave me that feeling in the back of my head that if this film had come out just a couple of short months ago (say in the weeks before California voted on Proposition 8…) things might have gone a little bit differently.
Keith Olbermann’s moving monologue An American Tail movie about the Prop.8 vote has been zipping around the Internet, the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg has a brilliant essay in last week’s New Yorker. The first paragraph lays out the Church of Latter Day Saint’s hypocrisy over Prop. 8.
In today’s Slate, Dennis Lim ponders the question that I’ve been asking for weeks, whether Gus Van Sant’s film could’ve swayed the vote.
The passage of Prop 8 transformed Van Sant’s film from a delicate, serious-minded period biopic into something altogether more urgent and emotional: a threnody, a catharsis, a call to action. Its hero, played by an unusually warm and giddy Sean Penn, is not simply a trailblazer who threw open closet doors; he’s a prophet whose words still matter and, what’s more, have gone sadly unheeded. There are moments in the film that now seem to traverse time and space, as if telepathically addressing the struggles of the present day. As the Prop 6 results start to roll in, Harvey tells his followers: “If this thing passes, fight the hell back.”
Well, California’s progressives are fighting back. The photos of Prop. 8 protests are moving download Tunnel Rats dvd and will hopefully get progressives riled up. I’m also hoping that Gus Van Sant and those surrounding the film realize that they’ve got a chance to make things a bit more fair for those who just want a bit of love.