The opera bits were also curious. Clearly, "Tosca" must have been Harvey Milk's favorite opera. Years ago I worked on the operatic version of Harvey's story, and I seem to remember some "Tosca" references in that, too. The scene where Harvey is watching the death of Cavaradossi was meant, I guess, to foreshadow his own death. Spoletta, who comes in at the climax, looked an awful lot like Dan White, which had to have been on purpose. But I don't know why Van Sant had him looking at the marquee of the opera house with "Tosca" advertised on it as he was dying. It just doesn't seem that important to bring up at that moment.
I've just come back home after seeing "Milk" (Yes, good films take for ever to premiere over here when they aren't of the TDK type) and I've been reading through this thread, getting some insight and more knowledge than the film gave me. Thank you all who have posted for that.
I took the references to Tosca to be a kind of relatively heavy-handed referback to something that occurs early on in the film, when someone (The Franco character?) ribs Milk about his love for opera and Milk says he likes opera because "it's larger than life" etc. So when Milk watches the death of Cavaradossi and Tosca, it's a foreshadowing - and when he watches the Tosca posters as he dies it's going fulll circle into making the statement that
his life was larger than life, just like opera. So it makes perfect sense that there is an opera about him. I didn't know that.
I liked the film, very well acted and all.... I didn't quite understand all that happened in Milk's personal life and I guess that was downplayed on purpose because it was Milk the activist, organizer and politician who was the focus of the film. But I got distracted by my wondering about what happened to his partner who suddenly wasn't there, and what was the issue with the new guy, etc. and that took focus away from what actually happened on screen for me, so I think that downplaying backfired. Or maybe I'm just slow. I didn't know anything in-depth about Harvey Milk at all before I went to see the film, I just had some very general info.)
I guess that lack of knowledge is the reason for my immediate reaction to the film; - it made me very sad. Sad for the tragic assassination. Sad to see that whole ugly prejudiced midieval mess with the Proposition 6, though they eventually managed to defeat it. Sad to think of Prop 8 and how far there still is to go after these many years. And sad because of the time this took place... late 70's. How many of the guys walking in that Milk mourning parade at the end of the film did not live to see the mid-80's/late 80's? I kept thinking they had some truly horrible and difficult years ahead, all bigots aside, and.... the sum of all this, yep it made me very sad.
But I thought Sean Penn did an outstanding job. So this time, that Oscar was deserved.
