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Canadian actress Alison Pill didn't know much about Harvey Milk when she auditioned to play his lesbian campaign manager in Gus Van Sant's biopic Milk. Twenty-two years old, she considered herself fairly informed about the history of the gay rights movement, and yet all she knew about Harvey was something vague about the "Twinkie defense."

Today, Pill is one of Harvey's biggest fans. And she belongs to another fan club, too, one a lot of queer women are going to be joining when they get to know Anne Kronenberg, the curly-haired dyke-on-a-bike who ran Harvey's first successful campaign, played by Pill in the film.

At first glance, it's hard to see much similarity between the two women, although Kronenberg was also 22 years old when tapped by Milk to run his third supervisorial campaign.

Strong, confrontational, and passionate, Anne rode a motorcycle and wore leather jackets. She took on the...

Photo credit: Phill Bray / Focus Features

It's hard to take an objective look at a film whose story is not just familiar but iconic to its audience. It's even harder when that story has already been told in a groundbreaking documentary, and harder still if some of the film's audience actually lived through its events.

That Gus Van Sant's Milk transcends all those factors and looks to be one of the best films of the year is a testament to the power of its story as well as the creative forces that came together to tell it.

Most Lgbt people probably know the bare bones of Harvey Milk's story already: That he helped spearhead the fight against a tidal wave of anti-gay legislation that swept the country as part of Anita Bryant's anti-gay crusade; that he advocated coming out as the most powerful weapon against homophobia; that he...