democracyforcalifornia.com

LACTOSE INTOLERANT

.
HOW WHITE KILLED MILK

NO DOUBTS ABOUT DOUBT

The California Art Form Gets Real

New York and California will always lead the nation, in the movies and in real life. They are the two great stages where Americans go to act out their dreams. The intimate intensity of the New York theater, and the universal impact of the Hollywood film bring the starkest realities to the rest of the nation, and the world. They are the artistic crucibles where our moral and emotional mettle is made.

In "Doubt," the homophobic working class Irish Catholic Bronx of my own boyhood gets a pretty good going over, NY style. In "Milk," the post-hippie, gay-liberation era San Francisco of my twenties is closely examined. In both beautiful, spectacularly well-acted films, we have a main character who struggles with his own sexuality. Harvey Milk escaped his constrictive corporate existence in New York in the late 1960's, and helped found a movement in the Castro district of San Francisco based on the exuberance of sexual freedom that was born in the Seventies and pretty much hit a brick wall with the AIDS epidemic of the 1980's. By then, America's first successful, openly-gay politician in a major American city had been assassinated, by a classic homophobe.

In "Doubt," a possibly gay, possibly closeted young Catholic priest tries to start his own sort of Summer of Love, five or ten years too early, and in the wrong place. Under the iron-fisted rule of the principal of the parish school, Sister Aloysius Beauvier, Father Brendan Flynn begins to seem like a victim of a sexual Stalinist regime. While my impression was that the good Father's relationship with his altar boys was one of restrained, non-sexual affection, Meryl Streep's Sister Aloysius pounds him with accusation after baseless, relentless accusation, until he begins to doubt his own intentions. The fact that this female Torquemada has, as she puts it, distanced herself from God and man in order to accomplish this auto-da-fe causes us to doubt both her and the priest. Are they both evil?

[continued]
.

.

We don't want to see a priest engaging in sex with a ten year-old boy. The topicality of that makes this film especially hard-hitting. But, if a heterosexual priest can maintain his celibacy, why couldn't a homosexual priest? And what is wrong with a priest, or any man or woman, loving a boy or a girl, if there is no sex happening, especially when the child desperately needs that love? What we see happening in this film is an attempt at emotional glasnost in the Catholic Church, ruthlessly put down by a tyrant who despises all emotion, and hunts down any passion, any pleasure, to stamp it out with her big black nuns' shoes. That struggle is still going on today in the Church. And humanity is losing.

Ten or fifteen years later, in "Milk," we see a society in turmoil, unable to contain the social, sexual and emotional exuberance of its' young people, my own generation. We simply weren't listening to the old folks any more. We could see how frustrated and unhappy our elders were with their own self-repression, and we were having none of it. But, lest we forget, the old regime did not go quietly, not in the streets and not in our own hearts and minds. Dan White was one of us, too. "Milk" reminds us that there was brutal repression by the police, and vicious attacks every day on gays by common thugs in the street that went unpunished, everywhere. (Still happening today, but with more protests.)

The lessons of the African-American civil rights movement and the anti-war movement were taken to heart by many in the gay community, and a real political movement was born. The film chronicles the struggle; ironically, as it was waged all over California over the issue of firing gay teachers, a stalking horse of the national anti-gay movement fronted by people like Anita Bryant, the Rick Warren of her day. The parallels to the Prop 8 battle this past year are serendipitous, as the film was finished before all that really exploded. It's sad to see that Californians in the supposedly wacky and selfish 70's were more tolerant and committed to human rights than they are today.

Ironically, the villains in both these films strike out in the name of morality, as though they represented society as a whole, when they are really acting out of personal feelings, and a sense of powerlessness, of losing control. It is the "perverts," in both cases, who have real power over them, in the social order. Their response, in both cases, is brutality and violence, physical or emotional. It's an interesting depiction of the emotional roots of fascism, and an up close and personal view of the struggles between progressives and conservatives to this very day. The personal is very political. And the political is always personal.

The real issue in both films is not sex, it's love. If I have any quarrel with either film, it is that they focus a little too much on sex. Yes, that's our national obsession, especially gay sex. It sells tickets. But the real poignancy of both of these films lies in the depiction of their characters' hearts, not their genitals. These are human beings trying to reach out to other human beings. In our cold Anglo-Saxon culture, perversely, it is only through sex that we can touch each other at all. In spite of or because of our Puritan upbringing, it is easier and more acceptable to put your hand on someone's crotch than on their heart.

Sean Penn's Harvey Milk has no trouble getting laid, no matter what society says. Yet, even as he liberates his own sexuality, and gains political power, he finds it harder to make contact emotionally. The great Philip Seymour Hoffman's priest, perhaps unaware of his own sexuality, or deliberately keeping it locked away, cannot lock up his heart. He wants to give it to everyone, in the name of God. And that is his downfall. His open displays of genuine affection are taken for sexual advances by observers, and everyone concerned ends up being raped, emotionally. It is our cold hard modern American nature that is examined in these films, once we get past the sex. The sex is almost taken for granted, everyone assumes it will happen, if it hasn't already. What is finally denied is the love.

When poor frustrated redneck macho cop-fireman-City Supervisor Dan White finally kills San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor (councilman) Harvey Milk, it is not over sex. It's over his emotional anguish at not fitting in, at being betrayed, as he sees it, at being subjected to the cold hard calculus of politics in the raw. He's like a jilted lover, hurt not by any physical betrayal, but by the emotional beating he takes from more sophisticated politicians. Not to excuse White's horrible acts, or what he stands for, but director Gus Van Sant, who is famously gay, and Josh Brolin, who has become a masterful actor, really do make you feel a little sorry for this poor sick bastard. At the same time, as he brutally and graphically slaughters Harvey Milk, you can't help but think that now poor Harvey will never find true love. You can see it in his eyes, for which Madonna's ex deserves several Oscars.

It may seem as though these films, which I saw one right after the other in the same cineplex on the same day, are too sad and disturbing. But I think they succeed emotionally, because they do not attempt to manipulate you, emotionally. Emotion is the subject of both films, but they both eloquently present their case directly to your mind, your intellect. You leave the theater thinking, not raging or crying. You will be glad, as you exit, that you have an emotional life. (At least, I hope you do.) You will be thinking about it, and appreciating the approach both films have taken in discussing emotions and intimacy, love and sex, power and submission, justice and inhumanity. And you will be asking yourself, with so much love out there, and so much need to love and be loved within each of us, why is the world dominated by hatred? This may be the central question of our age: What the f**k is wrong with us? These two brilliant films do not answer that question; but at least they ask it.

[Posted by cosanostradamus of blog me no blogs.]
.
.

Posted by Cosa Nostradamus at January 15, 2009 12:03 AM