a timely and inspiring biopic

Rating: 9/10 (14 March 2009)

How fortuitous a thing is timing. Released only a few weeks after the passage of Proposition 8 - a ballot measure that took away the rights of same-sex couples to marry in California - Gus Van Sant's Oscar-nominated film "Milk" turns back the clock to another, similar struggle in American civil rights history and to the iconic figure who helped to wage it.
Harvey Milk was, of course, the San Francisco supervisor and gay-rights pioneer who, along with Mayor George Moscone, was gunned down in city hall in November 1978. The perpetrator, Dan White, a disgruntled fellow board member who had recently resigned his seat, was found guilty of manslaughter (using the now infamous "Twinkie Defense" to get the lower charge), sent to prison for a mere five years, then released in 1984, only to take his own life two years later.
Dustin Lance Black's Oscar-winning screenplay traces Milk's meteoric rise from an obscure, still largely closeted Republican businessman in the early 1970s to the de facto leader of the gay-rights movement that began to take shape during that decade. He became the first openly gay man in the state to be elected to public office and, in 1978, he was instrumental in helping to defeat Proposition 6, which, if passed, would have made it illegal for homosexuals (and even straight supporters of homosexuals!) to teach in California public schools (was this really only thirty years ago?). Throughout all this, Milk managed to develop a large, highly charged grass roots organization, the purpose of which was not merely to combat bigotry wherever it reared its ugly head but to win over the hearts and minds of the people in their community and the nation as a whole.
There has been some criticism leveled against the movie that it is too reverential in its treatment of Milk, that it paints him too much as a saint and not enough as an ordinary human being with the requisite number of weaknesses and flaws to make him truly viable as a character. Even if one were to accept that charge (which I do not), it still doesn't take into account the very special quality that Sean Penn himself brings to the role. With obviously heightened mannerisms that he is careful never to allow to slide over into caricature or camp, Penn makes Milk both charismatically larger-than-life and recognizably human at one and the same time. Whether he's in front of a crowd rallying the troops with his megaphone or enjoying a tender moment with his longtime boyfriend, Scott Smith, Penn allows us see the many facets of this obviously complex man.
In a movie chock full of outstanding supporting performances, James Franco as Smith, Josh Brolin as Dan White, and Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones, a rootless young man inspired by Milk to become a lifelong activist, are the obvious standouts.
As a director, Van Sant keeps things moving at an almost whirlwind pace, beautifully balancing the "big" scenes of rallies and marches with the more intimate moments depicting Milk's relationships with those around him. At times Van Sant brings an almost documentary-style immediacy to the film, seamlessly blending actual footage from that era (much of it of Anita Bryant and her anti-gay crusade) with convincingly staged re-enactments of events at that time. Obviously wanting to end on a positive note, the movie mentions but does not dramatize the "White Night Riots" which took place in the city following the assassinations, instead focusing on the enormous candlelight march that wended its way through the shocked and devastated city. Thus, the ending, like the movie itself, is a necessary and deeply moving reminder of how the courage of one individual to stand up for what he knows is right can inspire others to follow in his footsteps - and change the world in the process.
By opening with file footage of men being arrested at a gay bar then carted off in paddy wagons to be booked as "sex offenders," "Milk" makes the viewer realize how very far society has come in the time since the events depicted in this story - and, with the recent passage of Proposition 8, how very far it still has to go.