[Dostoevsky’s characters] are John the Baptists of wayward intellect and obsessive pathology, operating in the lower depths where the sleepless deformed brilliant intelligence is busily at work hatching plots that will change the course of history for the rest of us.
— Charles Baxter, The Art of Subtext Dostovesky and Milk The movie Milk struck me a commendable and engrossing movie–like most biopics, a little slow to get going because life is so poorly paced. It had interesting things to say about the politics of movements (as opposed to the poliics of governing). But as fascinating as Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk was, I was also intrigued by the film’s antagonists, San Francisco City Supervisor Dan White and anti-gay California State Assemblyman John Briggs. And looking at the Baxter quote, I realize why: they were Dostoyevsky characters. That said, a movie about White would have probably just became one more chronicle of an angry disaffected white man.
