I just saw Gus Vant Sant’s Milk. You will surely have read similar receptions elsewhere, but, to echo them, it’s a profoundly moving film with excellent performances from everyone, and demonstrates Van Sant’s mastery of the medium of film in numerous ways. I’m not here to review the film, however. Rather, I’m compelled to allow a post I found over at the IMDb message boards speak to both the film’s excellence, and also to perhaps the most powerful and rarefied of effects a work of great art can achieve: the activation of positive, tangible change in the world.

by tony-674 (Tue Dec 16 2008 04:19:06)

This is a ‘confession’ of a former right-wing fundamentalist.

I was born into a ‘christian’ home; went to church, went to christian schools, listened to christian music and only had christian friends. I didn’t even know what a homosexual was until later in life. My faith taught me to love and show compassion to others. Yet homosexuals were ‘outside’ this love. It was quite accepted and supported to discriminate against such ‘sinners’. Yet in my early 20s (i’m 28 now), i started questioning everything .. esp the dogma surrounding the evangelical’s churches view of homosexuals.
By 25 i finally came to the conclusion that no one would ‘choose’ homosexuality. I was angry that the God of the New Testament would create people whom he condemned.

How does this all relate to the movie Milk?
Well … i found myself crying in the parking lot after the movie was over. I felt angry. I was angry at myself for believing and accepting such hate. I regretted all the aweful things i had said/thought. This movie demonstrated how similarly the arguments in support of prop 8 were of prop 6. And that people still consider homosexuals to be deviants. There are many Anita Bryant’s in the world today — they just aren’t as tactless. They pretend to love; yet they discriminate just as loudly. They are the Sarah Palins, the Mike Huckabee’s, the Mormons and the evangelicals.

For those reading this that are gay; I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all the aweful, hateful things you have had to endure. You didn’t choose to be gay but as John Stewart says people choose their religion. There is hope. People can change. After all, I did.

To a better world in the new year.

-Paris