The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)

The greatest movie ever made..!

Good concept, poorly executed.

From my favorite movies..

Amateur movie with Big budget

Winning an Oscar for Best Documentary and several other awards, this film was certainly one of the very best that I have seen. It was stirring and eloquent and beautiful in showing the rise of someone, Harvey Milk, that really wanted to make a difference in the lives of all people.It was, at the same time, a portrayal of the hate that still exists in California after the passage of Proposition 8. The trial of Dan White had a result that was no different that those of Klan members on trial for killing African-Americans in the South.The election of Harvey Milk was an event that is equal to the election of Barack Obama, and for the same reason. He gave hope to all the "us's" who were without hope that they would ever be treated fairly by the dominant power structure.This film tells a story that will inspire and infuriate anyone who sees it. Absolutely brilliant.

There was a time when it was impossible for people — straight or gay — even to imagine Harvey Milk. The funny thing about Milk is that he didn't seem to care that he lived in such a time. I think Milk is really courageous to face himself and he even doesn't mind how others look upon him. Besides, he puts into practice what he wants to do and he indeed achieves his dream. Although he was killed in the end, it probably awakened as many gay people as his election had. Realizing one is a gay is usually causes for terror, or at least mortification, but Milk felt too great a sense of entitlement to let either emotion prevail. It is no doubt that Milk is such a legendary person in the world.

Touching movie. A man who bravely expressed his homosexual opinion in the history is Harvey Milk. He is not one of the most mediocre, but an extraordinary man. Although he was assassinated by unknown gang, his deeds have been commemorated by the mass that has always supported him. He launched the way which spoke out the right of homosexual guys itself. What Milk did pushed homosexual right to go step forward, one after another. Because of him, the gay circle has become not only more ubiquitous but less prejudiced. After that, the novels, films and even the daily soft operas on TV, it implied that "homosexual" this term has been more and more acceptable. Also, due to his sacrifice, his deeds have been displayed. So, gay guys come out.

Harvey Milk was too good to be true, too unaffected as a debater, too approving of silliness, too capable of laughing at himself, too serious about equality, too angry about inequality, to endure on this plain of existence as a leader. Time has thanked his bravery in running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and becoming California's first openly gay public official. Why was that so brave? Because that conquest may well have been at his own peril.Rob Epstein's Oscar-winning documentary illustrates the life and death of not only Milk but odd one out Mayor George Moscone, who both were killed by Dan White, one of Milk's fellow supervisors. It also depicts the political and social atmosphere in San Francisco, which throughout the 1960s and '70s began to be a magnet for emergent quantities of gays owing to its customarily accommodating viewpoint. Milk was one of them, and in old photographs we see him in his beatnik days before he ultimately shaved and opened a camera store in the Castro District. It was from Castro that Milk ran for office and was beaten three times before at long last winning in the same election that placed the first man of Chinese extraction, the first black woman, and the first declared feminist on the board. Milk was a virtuoso self- promoter, and this Harvey Fierstein-narrated opus embraces first-rate TV news footage showing him campaigning on such matters as people not picking up their dogs' poop, and stepping, with accurate measure, into a tactically located pile of such at the culmination of the interview.There is a whole heap of great footage of Milk, Moscone, and White, who disliked gay people. It is interspersed with later interviews with many of Milk's loyal comrades, including a seasoned leftist who confesses that he was bigoted against gays until he met Milk and began to appreciate the political concerns implicated. There is immeasurably touching, volume- speaking footage of the two demonstrations motivated by the deaths of Milk and Moscone: a noiseless, candle-lit procession of 45,000 people on the night of their deaths, and an outraged night of rioting when White got what a compassionate sentence.This is an enthralling piece, as the light it casts on a decade in the life of a great American city and on the lives of Milk and Moscone, who made it a better, and unquestionably more appealing, location to live.