Milk opens with archival footage of police raiding gay bars and arresting patrons during the 1950s and 1960s. The film then shows Harvey Milk speaking into a tape recorder nine days before his murder, dictating a letter to be read only in the event of his assassination.

The movie flashes back to New York City in 1970, the eve of Harvey's 40th birthday and his first meeting with Scott Smith, his much younger lover. Harvey had grown unsatisfied with his life because he had done nothing to be proud of. Overcoming hesitation and fear, the couple moves to San Francisco to focus on something meaningful. They also hope to find larger acceptance of their relationship. When they open a camera store in the shadow of the Castro Theater , they learn that even America's most vocal gay community is being systematically persecuted by homophobic police. When Harvey and Scott kiss openly, excited to be in business, a neighbor makes it clear that gay men are not welcome in the once solid Irish-Catholic Castro .

Frustrated by the opposition they encounter, Harvey Milk utilizes his background as a businessman, and his store becomes a location for gay activism. Distributing a list of gay-friendly businesses has its desired impact as gay-hating shops fail. This activism becomes instrumental for the eventual transformation of his working class environment into a predominantly gay neighborhood.

Despite death threats, Milk becomes a fiery orator to stop and prevent violence against gays, as well as forging an alliance with liberals, unions, longshoremen, teachers, Latinos, blacks and others with common cause. He makes powerful appeals to closeted gays to come out to their families, friends and co-workers, so the straight world might stop demonizing them.

Initially Scott serves as Harvey's campaign manager. But his frustration grows with Milk's devotion to politics despite death threats, and he leaves him. Soon Harvey meets Jack Lira, a sweet-natured but unbalanced young man. Because Jack cannot tolerate Milk's devotion to political activism either, he hangs himself.

Harvey Milk loses three elections to a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors but refuses to quit. Each election cycle offers a new glimmer of hope -- an increase in the number of votes received, or a possible rezoning of districts that would open up favorable neighborhoods for more successful election outcomes. He finally wins the election in 1977. His victory makes him the first openly gay man to be voted into major public office in the United States.

Milk's success gives hope to many, like Paul, a wheelchair-bound boy in Minnesota who wanted to kill himself because his parents planed to ship him off to a hospital to cure him of homosexuality. Instead, Paul becomes an activist.

At City Hall, Harvey meets the conservative fellow supervisor Dan White, a Vietnam veteran, former police officer, and firefighter. White believes that homosexuality is a sin. He campaigns with his wife, kids and the American flag. Although Milk attends the christening of White's new baby, the conservative supervisor has a growing resentment for Harvey, largely due to the attention paid to Milk by the press and his colleagues.

As they are building a n awkward alliance, White asks for Milk's assistance in preventing a psychiatric hospital from opening in his district in exchange for his support of Milk's citywide gay rights ordinance. When Milk fails to support White, he feels betrayed and casts the sole vote against the ordinance.

Harvey Milk gets national attention for his effort to defeat Proposition 6, which seeks to ban gays and lesbians from working in California's public schools. After working tirelessly against this proposition, Milk and his supporters achieve its defeat.

In the meantime, White promotes a supervisor pay raise. When he does not get much support, he resigns. Under the pressure of the police union, the increasingly unstable White changes his mind and asks the city to recant his resignation . But mayor Moscone denies his request, after having been lobbied by Milk to not reinstate White.

At the next morning, White breaks into City Hall through an office under renovation, to avoid the metal detectors. Moscone rebuffs his request for re-appointment. Enraged, White shoots Moscone and then Milk. 30,000 people come out in a long march from the Castro to City Hall to honor Harvey Milk that night with candles.

The movie suggests that Harvey believed that White might be a closeted gay man. At the end of the film, text on screen tells us that Dan White's lawyers used the infamous "Twinkie Defense" in his trial, claiming chemicals in junk food made him unbalanced and caused him to kill . Therefore his conviction was reduced to voluntary manslaughter, and he served only five years in prison. Less than two years after his release, White committed suicide.

Despite showing Harvey Milk's untimely death, Milk portrays a hero's legacy that resonates in the here and now. Movie characters' stories are often similar to the Hero's Journey in mythology. On their quest the hero goes through phases of hesitation, fear, becoming aware that she cannot go back, facing tests, obstacles, and crises, confronting fear, and gaining new perspective. This applies also to biographically inspired movies. Biopics can have an even more powerful impact on the viewer than those that are based on a fantasy screenplay, because clients empathize strongly with the historical figure who is behind the film character. Harvey Milk started his Hero's Journey at age 40 and faced many challenges before he succeeded.

Using film heroes in Cinema Alchemy supports a client's process because we can make the following assumptions:
· Striving toward growth and transformation by working with and taking on life's challenges is part of human nature.
· Sometimes this impulse, and our capacity to respond to it in a healthy way, is compromised.
· Myths, as products of the collective unconscious, can help us re-access this capacity through modeling.
· Movies express our evolving mythology.
· Many typical screenplays which mirror real-life transitions are structured in a way that is similar to myths.
Consequently:
· Using certain movies in Cinema Alchemy can support our psyche's growth and transformation.