Positive critics

In most cases, Harvey Milk was acclaimed by the critics. Most of them saw the movie as amplifying the cause for gay rights, raising awareness of the past and being a source of inspiration for a new generation of activists.  

Criticisms

However, according to Julia Erhart's article ("The Naked Community Organizer: Politics and Reflexivity in Gus Van Sant's Milk", a/b: Auto/Biography studies (2011)), some critics, writers and journalists blamed Gus Van Sant for omitting some aspects of Milk’s life. Most of them were gays and some of them had lived in San Francisco in the 1970s and sometimes knew Milk or some of his friends represented on screen (like American academic and writer Michael Bronski, or American writer and theatre critic Hilton Als). As a consequence, they had high expectations on the historical fidelity of the biopic.

For instance, , as underlined in Julia Erhart's article, Hilton Als criticized the fact that women were under-represented in the movie (only activist Anne Kronenberg is represented), stating that it did not correspond to Milk’s life, as shown in Epstein’s documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (1984).

Numerous writers also criticized the inaccuracy concerning Milk’s private life. First, they condemned what they called the “desexualisation” of the San Francisco gay community and Harvey Milk’s life in particular (Julia Erhart's article I mentioned above). Indeed, Milk’s protagonist was seen with successively two lovers (Scott Smith and Jack Lira). According to some critics and writers, it misrepresents Milk’s life and gay sexuality by following the convention of monogamous romance. Many gays (among whom, Milk), especially at the time in San Francisco, had many lovers at the same time and casual anonymous sex was very frequent, which is not represented in the movie. The centrality of sex and desire in gay male culture is mentioned very little. Second, some critics blamed the movie for focusing too much on politics. According to them, Harvey Milk dedicated all of its story time to politics and activism, which eclipse other personal aspects of Milk’s life (psychology, personal convictions about sex, romance, family,…). For instance, the audience does not see to what extent Scott’s departure and Jack Lira’s suicide affected Milk. The movie does not dwell on Milk’s feelings about those two traumatic events.