Gus Van Sant's new film, Milk, is thoughtful, patient, funny and touching, and both Sean Penn and James Franco should get Oscars, but it doesn't answer the questions any biopic raises for me: what's it for and why now? Or perhaps it does have the answers, but we have to do our own digging for them.

Harvey Milk was an elected official of the city of San Francisco, said to be the first openly gay man to hold public office in the United States. His title was supervisor, but the job resembled that of a city councillor elsewhere. He and the mayor who supported him were shot and killed in 1978 by another, resentful supervisor called Dan White. White served five years for manslaughter and committed suicide soon after his release.

LRB 1 January 2009 | PDF Download