"Milk" is real and emotional thanks to gifted direction, acting

Rating: 9/10 (19 January 2009)

Far and away the most emotional film of 2008 is the biopic of openly gay San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk. As a biopic, "Milk" may not seem like a very innovative or eye- opening film; we've seen films about crusaders for Civil Rights before, where small groups of citizens ban together to fight a large oppressive force, even where the hero is killed in the end. But even still, with Gus Van Sant at the helm and a handful of talented actors young and old, you've never seen a film like "Milk."
Harvey Milk is played by Sean Penn, who continues to amaze audiences everywhere with not only very deep and believable performances, but transformative ones. In his best role since his Oscar-winning performance in "Mystic River" and his most astounding since "I Am Sam," Penn is at surefire Oscar caliber. He captures everything from the hard-nosed politician side of Harvey Milk to the soft, effeminate side. He's so incredibly natural through every aspect that you don't often think about how good Sean Penn is: you're thinking about how interesting Harvey Milk is.
But we've seen incredible performances like this in film's of this nature. What changes all that is Van Sant. Though it's been a decade since his landmark film "Good Will Hunting," you wouldn't know it after watching "Milk." His greatest strength is to bring characters their humanity, to make each scene and all the dialog appear so real and natural. His camera is an observer, not an interferer. He picks and chooses his unique shots very carefully to enhancing meaning and not create it.
This also strengthens the amazing supporting cast. Emile Hirsch, who starred in Penn's "Into the Wild" last year, continues to make the case that he will indeed be a great actor like the film's star, in his role as activist and community organizer Cleve Jones. Josh Brolin even makes Dan White--the supervisor that clashes with Harvey and ultimate brings about his demise--a character worthy of our sympathies. Van Sant gets the most out of everyone in this film, because this picture to him is very clearly about the movement more than the man.
More than anything else, "Milk" is a story about the gay rights movement in 1970 and how San Francisco became the center of it thanks to the larger-than-life attitude of Harvey Milk. In his first major credit, writer Dustin Lance Black impresses, though his script has trouble reconciling the Harvey's personal life and his political career, ironically much like Harvey himself does. The film's core lies in what Milk meant to the movement and what he accomplished, not as much in how an openly gay man struggles in both his personal life and in his career when he chooses to do something like this. It's definitely there, but it's second. Still, the writing sensitively weaves all the aspects of Harvey's life together.
"Milk" is an emotional film. It doesn't try to be politically sensitive--those who do not support homosexuality will not find fair treatment from Van Sant and the film as a whole: they are the enemy. By focusing on the people that poured their lives into this work, "Milk" has you quickly identifying with the struggle that gay activists and gays in general dealt with at the time and to an extent still very much do today. It seeks to open the audience's eyes to the gay rights movement's history, using a lot of actual 70s footage. If you love this film it's because you get swept up in the emotion of the movement and the characters that so naturally fight for it and care about it and nothing else. Black and Van Sant are careful, however, not to portray Milk as a martyr--there is no liberal Hollywood agenda against conservative Christianity. This is about what Milk accomplished while he was alive and what he meant to the movement he fought passionately for.