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Milk

Buzz says:   MPAA Rating: R
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While not as intensely powerful as Rob Epstein’s 1984 Oscar winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, Gus Van Sant’s Milk is a passionate and emotionally moving look at the eight critical years of the life of San Francisco’s first openly gay city supervisor and gay activist who was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone in 1978 by a disturbed fellow supervisor Dan White. This film has justifiably been nominated for eight Academy Awards including best picture, director, actor and supporting actor.

What distinguishes Van Sant’s film from the documentary (which was equally an indictment of the absurd legal system that allowed a killer’s freedom on a junk-food “Twinkie defense”) is the exploration of the more personal human side of Milk. Sean Penn plays Harvey with such natural enthusiasm, sincere intensity and uncanny imitation of the real Milk, you can’t help but feel for his highs and lows, as well as root for his cause. From his early days as a businessman establishing his camera store in San Fran’s Castro district with lover Scott Smith, to the suicide loss of another lover, and several runs for the city council and endless fights against hateful anti-gay ordinances, Penn brings to life a man of near manic desires.

Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, frame the narrative with Milk retelling his personal story of his movement on a tape recorder with instructions that this should only be played upon his untimely death. The film effectively highlights Milk’s political skill at creating coalitions among other minorities, labor and political factions to lead movements against Coors beer, challenge a bigoted state senator’s plan to bar gay teachers and other workers from employment, and fighting the discrimination of Proposition 6 in California. The film only falls to bits of melodramatics toward its climactic events when Milk is challenged by supervisor White’s opposition to gay rights mandates in the city council and the inevitable murders.

Along with Penn’s near career best performance, Van Sant assembles a cast with finely understated performances from Emile Hirsch, as young activist Cleve Jones, Diego Luna’s Latin lover Jack, James Franco’s Scott Smith, Alison Pill’s Anne Kronenberg, Milk’s enthusiastic lesbian ally and Josh Brolin’s tight collared, intensely bigoted Dan White.