Penn Laughs!

Rating: 7/10 (26 June 2020)

Many great--and even not so great--actors, it at least seems to me, give arguably their best performances when playing against type. I tend not to be very fond of the comedies of, for instance, Steve Carell, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, or Robin Williams and others before them in such vein, but their more dramatic work is sometimes excellent. Conversely, Leslie Nielsen was a rather undistinguished dramatic actor before "Airplane!" (1980). The lovely Charlize Theron won an Oscar for portraying "Monster" (2003). Matthew McConaughey revealed he could act when he stepped out of rom-coms. There's Henry Fonda as the villain in "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968). Charlie Chaplin as a serial killer in "Monsieur Verdoux" (1947). Or, the rare feat as proclaimed by the tagline for "Ninotchka" (1939), "Garbo Laughs!" Well, in "Milk," Sean Penn comes across as a nice guy. That he plays the historical figure of Harvey Milk, the first openly homosexual man elected to public office in California, seems less astounding than that he appears "gay" in the dated sense of the word as cheerful.
"Milk" is a solid and well-enacted, if largely standard and by-the-numbers, biopic besides Penn, but he obviously dominates the picture. The other thing I especially like about this one, however, is the exploiting of other art forms or media to form the plot. In addition to the usual oratory found on political soap boxes, Penn's Harvey narrates an audio recording for the framing narrative, which he tellingly says is only to be heard upon his assassination. Then, there's the camera shop he opens, with the film sometimes taking on the appearance of the photography of the era in which it's set, including some 16mm film and documentary style. Finally, there's the opera, which Harvey attends and is framed in the film as akin to Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theatre. Notice that although that's not where Milk is murdered, it's the place he was shortly before and where he looks in the end.
Although that makes it sound as though "Milk" is a downer, and, indeed, it is in that it ends in tragedy and covers the politics of America's history of homophobia, overall, this is a joyful and positive picture. We see Harvey lose election after election and the gay community abused by police and bigots repeatedly while their rights are taken away city by state, but, eventually, Milk successfully leads the effort against John Briggs and Anita Bryant's discriminatory campaigns in California and establishes the LGBT movement as a political force. And, now, the marriage debate that saw setbacks in California and elsewhere around the time this film was released has become history with the legalization of gay marriage throughout the country and much of the world. "You've gotta give them hope," as Milk says. Turns out, he did.