A New York subway in the 70's. A fleeting bit of flirting ending with two people in bed with a birthday cake. Quite a glorious way to ring in 40 years of existence however unremarkable they may have been. This is the beginning of Gus Van Sant's unflinching look at the life and times of Harvey Milk. To classify Milk as a "gay" (I mean in terms of issues it deals with) movie would be akin to calling The Godfather a "mafia" movie. It is a film that is extremely aware of Milk's significance and its topical nature, but transcends those confines in its attention to detail.
And the subtexts are not esoteric.Fairly easy to spot are the personal travails of a man married to a cause larger than himself and the insinuation that his eventual assailant may have been a closeted gay man struggling with his own sexual identity. In fact the performances and the plainly visible subtexts are what will make this movie the populist success that it is destined to be. However there are a few fine details that keep the movie from turning into a hagiography and that elevated the movie in my eyes.
Harvey Milk starts off as a brazen idealist- one who expounds the faults of a system without means or power to effect any change. But he learns very quickly, from an opponent, that power and idealism are strange bedfellows. And by the time he wins the position he seeks by virtue of a series of fortunate coincidences, he is ready. He is plainly aware of the ground he is trying to break and is "willing to do what is necessary" (that eternal Faustian conundrum facing anyone in power) to achieve his ends. In making this narrative choice, Gus Van Sant lends his Milk an undeniable credibility in one's eyes. Another "sacred cow" pitfall is sidestepped by proving that while fighting in his own end of the human rights spectrum, Milk wasn't one to shy away from the odd racial epithet laced quip.
Opera makes a prominent appearance through the most intimate moments in the movie but hardly leaves an impact on the performances. No big stereotypical gay flourishes in this movie, not even from the patently unstable drama queen of a lover played by Diego Luna. Only appropriate in a movie that seems to underscore the similarities in the differences.
And the subtexts are not esoteric.Fairly easy to spot are the personal travails of a man married to a cause larger than himself and the insinuation that his eventual assailant may have been a closeted gay man struggling with his own sexual identity. In fact the performances and the plainly visible subtexts are what will make this movie the populist success that it is destined to be. However there are a few fine details that keep the movie from turning into a hagiography and that elevated the movie in my eyes.
Harvey Milk starts off as a brazen idealist- one who expounds the faults of a system without means or power to effect any change. But he learns very quickly, from an opponent, that power and idealism are strange bedfellows. And by the time he wins the position he seeks by virtue of a series of fortunate coincidences, he is ready. He is plainly aware of the ground he is trying to break and is "willing to do what is necessary" (that eternal Faustian conundrum facing anyone in power) to achieve his ends. In making this narrative choice, Gus Van Sant lends his Milk an undeniable credibility in one's eyes. Another "sacred cow" pitfall is sidestepped by proving that while fighting in his own end of the human rights spectrum, Milk wasn't one to shy away from the odd racial epithet laced quip.
Opera makes a prominent appearance through the most intimate moments in the movie but hardly leaves an impact on the performances. No big stereotypical gay flourishes in this movie, not even from the patently unstable drama queen of a lover played by Diego Luna. Only appropriate in a movie that seems to underscore the similarities in the differences.
What's good for the body is Mom's Home-Cooked Food, and what I used to top it off with -- two tablespoonfuls, on the sly, every day, growing up -- is what *this* condensed Milk reminded me of. (Of course, come weekend, mom balked at the bone-dry can of MilkMaid she'd "safely" stashed on the top shelf, to make Paal Goa with, for her Bourn(e)vita-cake recipe. [And here we are, thinking Bourne was the only one who'd lost his girl in Goa!])
ReplyDeleteOops! Such blatant injection of comic element into a post that's anything but comical...how could I get so carried away? I need to find a rock now to go crawl under, for this blasphemy. Ah, MagMa...that molten rock in Earth's crust -- not a bad find for someone perpetually looking for Divine Comedy!
P.S: Seen the latest "Got Milk" White Gold ad on TV, alongside the new "Love Your Mom" Subaru ad, during the Jeopardy breaks? The former simply blew me away -- That "fallen angel from Losing My Religion video" look-alike, strumming a gold guitar, against a white background...I mean, everything is white, bathed in amber light...isn't that simply lovely or what!
ReplyDeleteYes I've seen and quite enjoy that White Gold commercial. Over the top and hence hilarious.
ReplyDeleteAt some point, I guess everyone feels unhooked. And, sometimes, that just so happens to be the point at which history (geography?) colludes (collides?) with cartoonists (or writers or movie-makers, or Ansel Adams) to counterpoint one's life. I arrived at that point (of diminishing returns, I thought, but hell no) a little while ago.
ReplyDelete"..just imagine a sumo wrestler or Turkish oil wrestler in a sports bra...and tell me you aren’t feeling slightly…unhooked," writes someone for a Saturday paper -- a piece that hit the wires the same day those wires hit me, from halfway across the world. Interestingly, she also writes, a day prior, about the "distances we place between ourselves," poignant only because I too felt distanced "From a Distance," right about that time.
"Throw in Japanese bombs, a truly sinister villain, dancing in the rain, a magical grandfather, some of the most beautiful scenery on the planet, kangaroos, and The Wizard of Oz…" writes someone else (right here, on your BlogRoll) summing up Australia (a movie I'm yet to catch), as I contemplated, in tandem, the Japanese bombs that landed on Pearl Harbor, 67 years ago (as of this 7th), while reading my favorite comic strip that also begins with "Pearl..," and (co)incidentally showcased Amazonian amphibians attempting to *bomb* a striped African mammal!
Six. Tea. Seven. Supper, you'd presume...but alas. No Fibonacci this, but it seems more likely, to me, that WWIII is what would complete *this* series (hope not!). Japan bombs America (AND Australia) to start WWII, and now, 67 years later, Japan, America and Australia are in the picture, all at once (if only in the way *I* see it). The dominoes fall thus: The "New York subway in the seventies" reference ties in to my extended listening of the Sounds of Silence live Carnegie Hall concert CD from '67; I read, yesterday, in the SV Life section of the Merc, a sweet treat headlined Hooked, followed by the blurb, "How a little fish is catching the attention of snack-happy trend-seekers. Until recently, aficionados of the fish-shaped sweet taiyaki had to travel to SFO or Japan to purchase traditional street snack food freshly made...[and now, it's available at], Sweet Breams, the 6-month-old San Mateo shop whose twist on the tradition has caught the attention of dessert fiends in search of the successor to cupcakes and cream puffs." (The online link has a chopped-up version minus the eye-catching headline/blurb). BTW, the only explanation I can offer by way of a Pisces connection is to point you to the origins of your (momentous!) Mathirakshi post (Born on the Fourth of March, geddit?); the News of the Weird section in yesterday's paper says a couple vacationing in Florida drove back to Wisconsin in their RV, with a pet kangaroo on the woman's lap; Jeopardy contestant on last night's show, a screenwriter from LA, said his master's thesis was on Australian director Peter Weir; the show also had a category named Fish, Birds & Mammals; and finally, I stopped at a Valero gas pump last night to fill up and casually looked at the TV screen dangling overhead, you know the one that runs ads, with a latest-trivia sidebar? And the sidebar read: Australian astronomer charts Christmas star that led the three wise Men to Jesus!
And all I could think of, at the end of the weirdly wonderful day that was yesterday, was Ramji, the cook. In the Tamil original, didn't the "brute" go to Australia? (While in Australia, classy woman from London goes to brute!). I also couldn't help wondering if the Depardieu original would perhaps have (eventually) colored our brute cook's food choices ("Green CarB").
(Continuing the established trend of my jumping all over the place before finally picking up the Japan thread), speaking of the opera, I find it incredibly interesting that the aforementioned "fish" snack should have finally made its way to the Bay aRia -- slowly (yet surely) "swimming" across the Pacific. Puccini would be proud! (Now why does that remind me of a wahoo with wings, sailing the East Australian Current, as in this Portrait of a Still Life?)
P.S: Ah, Sweet Breams...(since when did they start spelling Dreams with a "B"?) reminds me of (what is, to me) the consummate "Bream" song. It sure is sweet to wind the week down, finally, feeling Hooked after two whole weeks of feeling, well, Unhooked!
Can I chime in real quick about my Chance Encounters of the Third Kind? Thanks. It isn't often that Horton runs into Hulk, Hancock and Hellboy 2, in succession. So when that odds-defying Happening, well, *happened* last week, Who can help but exonerate Horton for exclaiming "Ah, Free(ak)dom"?
ReplyDeleteChance often feels like the Cosmos choosing (randomly, of course) a handpicked few for a crackling game of catch. And your ability to last thru the duration of the game is directly proportional to your ability to keep your eye on the ball(s).
ReplyDeleteReason I write this is because my eye still seems to be on the Australia-Japan ball. In my mailbox today was the hard-copy (Vol.22. No.9) of the NorCal desi (used to be a rag but is now a half-decent) mag, India Currents. (The online edition, unfortunately, is at least a month behind in updating its Fiction, Food, and Travel sections, although other miscellaneous articles from the current issue are posted.)
I opened the travel page and found an article titled Discovery Down Under, opening thus: "Here's a piece of geographical trivia: India and Australia were once connected as part of the supercontinent Pangaea. The land masses drifted apart millions of years ago, but even today their contours fit like pieces of a complicated puzzle. On a recent trip to Australia, I discovered other lasting connections between India and Australia that transcend geography and defy the miles. The connection first became apparent in the iridescent plumes of a peacock roaming majestically in the Bongrong Wildlife Sanctuary..."
And over the course of this 2-page write-up, I was privy to some other potent connections this writer had made (some of which I could vicariously vouch for), such as Adelaide's #1 Indian restaurant Tandoori Oven (whose owner also ran another restaurant, Jasmine); Lark's whiskey distillery; Kangaroo Island (location of a Love Story 2050 song)...
And the article closes with," India and Australia may no longer fit in mass, but it seems fitting that what [famous cartographer] Flinders discovered hundreds of years ago can be seen today in a Bollywood film."
I flipped pages to the Recipe section (not that I'm a particularly good cook craving constant experimentation -- Au contraire!) and, in the "feature story" there, titled Beyond Sushi and Tempura, "Every five years, an adult delegation from Cupertino, Calif., visits Toyokawa, Japan, as part of their sister city program. Cupertino and Toyokawa have been sister cities for nearly 30 years...says the writer, following it up with a bunch of recipes (the ones that appealed to me included Stirfry Greens and Sweet Potato Surprise).
P.S: The clincher of the day, however, was when I stopped at the book table during a Costco run and my eyes fell on Obama's The Audacity of Hope: "AU" bolded in white, with the rest of the title letters, in black! (Is that Chance knocking it out of the park or what?)
I confess, I've been watching way too much Jeopardy! This (asinine attempt at a) clever camouflage of you-know-what in a "Sidney Sheldon meets Salman Rushdie" title of sorts is because the last time I (less covertly) referred to this all-too-important aspect of Biology-of-one's-being, the context got all convoluted, causing a curve ball to head my way, with catastrophic consequences (cardiovascularly speaking). One would presume I'd learn from my mistakes, but I guess not. Maybe I've made it a (Bad, no, superBad) habit to constantly push My Luck (Lucky M?). Or maybe the latest ad poster-promoting-breastfeeding I saw plastered on bus stops, begged a mention (and as if a bonny baby, wearing only his diaper, a blazing red Superman cape and a toothless smile, posing alongside a tagline that goes "Powered By Mama's Milk," were not enough to turn heads, with its sheer cuteness factor), if only because its predecessor, that Comcast Triple Play promo, was way past its expiration date and, rightfully, due for a reincarnation. (Thank God, somebody is paying attention!)
ReplyDeleteEither way, Ma matters. At least to me, for (aside from "Powering" me up, way back when) she brought me face-to-face with something I'd moved away from, about a decade ago. Visiting me couple weeks back, she handed me an MP3 CD, with golden oldies she knew she couldn't live without, to play. By a strange quirk of Fate (or recording fiasco), firmly wedged between "Paramasivan kazhuthilirundhu paambu kettadhu, Garuda sowkiyamaa" (that Muthuraman starrer, Suryagaandhi) and "Anbukku naan adimai" (who else but MGR of "Thai illamal Naan illai" fame) was... Sweet Child of Mine (oh for joy of Jesus, Guns 'N Roses followed by Indru pol endrum vaazhga?) - Thanks Maa!
P.S: "Either way, Ma matters" for I love the way he makes every cello sing...Go, Yo-yo!
ReplyDeleteAnd Rahman-E-Jawab (aka Voila!) - we have the eerily wonderful Imitation of Life, 108 years after 1942 A Love Story!
ReplyDeleteI brought home the much-dissed futuristic Love Story 2050 yesterday, despite two people in the line behind me, at the store -- having caught a glimpse of the DVD I was clutching -- overcoming their stranger-anxieties, literally begging me to go put it back on the shelf ("Watch Bhoothnath if you will, but NOT this one, if you don't want to ruin your weekend; this SUCKS big time!"). I smile sheepishly, telling them I've seen everything that's on that shelf tonight, so I'm willing to take my chances, and besides, I don't quite mind ruined weekends (which domestic dervish does?).
P.S: If Bollywood were a religious cult of sorts, I'd be willing to bet my bottom dollar that at its helm is an Iyengar -- what with 108 years bet. the two Love Stories reminding me of the 108 "Divya Kshetrams" frequented for Moksham...
And oh, there must be a good reason August, Autumn, Austerity, Audacity, Augury, Audubon, Auk, Aurous (Gold), Astronomical Unit (mean dist. bet. earth and sun), Autism...all begin with AU. What lovely locales that country has...so Green, so Blue!
Eight babblings (not that you're gonna waste time counting my comments in here, so better take my word for it) and eight months later, I finally catch the movie that ends with an other-side-of-the-glass-wall shot of Puccini's Tosca ("that appears as number Eight on Opera America's 2008 list of the 20 most-performed operas in North America," not to mention the transposed "S" -- for Straight, backwards? -- in the poster, that lends it the look of an "8")...and it's everything you've said here.
ReplyDeleteSo honest, so straighforward, so beautiful and, yes, so unapologetically sad. Truly, Penn *is* mightier than the 'S'word!