Milk

Milk - Dir. Gus Van Sant (2008)

"My name is Harvey Milk and I want to recruit you."

Auteur Gus Van Sant has bounced back and forth from the arthouse to the multiplex. He’s probably best known by mainstream audiences for the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting or the ill-conceived shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. He’s spent the last several years making films of a more avant-garde nature (Elephant, Gerry, Paranoid Park). Now, Van Sant has found some middle ground with his biopic of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay individual elected to public office. Milk is a rather conventional film that transcends its by-the-numbers narrative trappings thanks to an exceptional cast led by Sean Penn.

Penn might be a humorless killjoy in real life, but he’s an amazing actor. Here, he throws himself into the role. He’s created a three-dimensional character without simply relying on the mannered impersonation that a less-talented actor would have given. Dustin Lance Black’s script doesn’t bother to get into Harvey Milk’s childhood or family background. He wisely skips ahead to Milk at 40 who has a mid-life crisis or revelation. Milk transforms from a Wall Street banker and Goldwater Republican to a long-haired hippie. Moving to SF, he opens a camera shop and becomes known as the Mayor of Castro Street. Though Milk gains unlikely supporters in the teamsters union, he ultimately loses his initial three campaigns before becoming city supervisor. Milk shrewdly finds a way to relate to a wide demographic of voters (not just the gay community) by promising to clean up dog poop. Throughout all this, Penn captures the real Milk’s charm, disarming wit, and determination (as evidenced in the Oscar-winning documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk).

Josh Brolin gives yet another amazing performance as fellow supervisor Dan White who would go on to assassinate both Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Brolin is perfect as the straight-laced White, an ex-cop and firefighter. He’s a man not unsettled by Milk’s sexuality, but by Milk’s sudden rise in power and notoriety, a rise that should have been his. And there might have been a little more to it as Milk speculated, "He might be one of us."

Milk’s release couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. Milk organized gay activists against Prop 6 which called for the firing of all gay teachers in the public school system as well as their supporters. The measure was championed by singer Anita Bryant (who appears only in archival footage) and played upon the fears for their children’s safety. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Rating: *** 1/2