Milk has Aged Like a Fine Vintage Wine

Rating: 10/10 (8 August 2013)

Occasionally a film biography will feature a stellar performance that firmly merges the actor with the person portrayed: George C. Scott as Patton, Ben Kingsley as Gandhi, Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln. While Gus Van Sant's 1968 film about gay-martyr Harvey Milk does not strive for the spectacle of those works, his lead, Sean Penn, joins the lofty heights of those other Oscar-winning performers and becomes forever identified with the historical personage. Penn won a well-deserved second Oscar for the role, and Dustin Lance Black also took home a statuette for his literate engrossing screenplay.
Using real and recreated documentary footage as backdrop, Van Sant retells Milk's story from his melancholy 40th birthday to his assassination less than a decade later. Before he became the first openly gay person elected to public office in California, Milk felt that he had done little with his first 40 years of life and needed a change. With a good-looking boyfriend (James Franco), he heads west to San Francisco, opens a camera shop in the Castro District, and becomes a local political leader in the city's gay community. The camera shop develops into a political hangout, and, supported by an assemblage that includes Emile Hirsch, Alison Pill, and Joseph Cross, Milk makes several unsuccessful runs for a spot on the city's Board of Supervisors. Ultimately, in 1977, Milk won a fateful victory in the same election that propelled a "family values" champion, Dan White, well and creepily played by Josh Brolin, into office alongside him.
Black's screenplay details Milk's political dances with White, sometimes harmonious, sometimes adversarial. However, the film climaxes with Harvey's greatest victory, the defeat of California's Proposition 6; championed by Anita Bryant and State Senator John Briggs, the bill would have fired all gay teachers in the state. Although knowledgeable viewers will already know the results of the referendum and the tragic end of Harvey's life, Van Sant holds interest throughout, aided immensely by Sean Penn's career-topping performance. Not content with a striking physical resemblance, Penn inhabits Milk's persona with the mannerisms, speech patterns, and body language familiar from the public Milk. Unlike the grand-scale film biographies of world leaders like Patton or Gandhi, "Milk" honors its modest yet heroic subject with an intimate bio-pic that does not overwhelm its core performance. Like a fine red wine, "Milk" has aged well, and, five years after its release, the film resonates even more as the march towards marriage equality progresses. Without heroes like Harvey Milk, the country would be a poorer place, and, thanks to Van Sant, Black, and Penn, his story and sacrifice continue to inspire.