Penn Soars in Van Sant's Intimate Biopic of an Unlikely Hero

Rating: 9/10 (23 December 2008)

The combination of Sean Penn's fully immersed performance in the title role and Gus Van Sant's ("Good Will Hunting") assured, almost understated direction transforms first-timer Dustin Lance Black's episodic screenplay into an emotionally riveting film that does the subject justice. This 2008 biopic could have been timelier only if it was released prior to the November defeat of Proposition 8, which eliminated the legality of same-sex marriage in California. Now there is a melancholy twist to the way the film documents the triumph in failing to pass the Briggs Initiative, a ballot proposition that would have outlawed gays from teaching in the state's public school system. The champion behind its defeat was a former insurance actuarial statistician named Harvey Milk, who moved with his much-younger lover Scott Smith from New York to San Francisco where they hoped to find acceptance of their lifestyle.
Using as a running narrative device a tape recording that Milk made nine days before his assassination and interspersing archival footage, the film's plot follows Milk's growing political consciousness in face of the pervasive discrimination and violence against gays in the 1970's. He opens a camera shop in what was only beginning to be known as the Castro. Although Smith tires of his partner's obsessive activism and leaves him, Milk himself finds success as an openly gay city supervisor after two previous failed attempts. While on the Board, he meets the highly conservative Dan White, a family man struggling with his finances and personal demons. Things come to a head when White feels betrayed by Milk for his lack of support over banning a psychiatric hospital in White's district. At the same time, Milk was facing the daunting task of curtailing a burgeoning conservative movement led by former beauty queen Anita Bryant (whose newsreel appearances lend an eerie virulence to the story).
The fight over the Briggs Initiative provides the film's eruptive climax, and the subsequent tragic events are all too familiar  especially to those of us who lived through them exactly thirty years ago. Van Sant wisely plays down the sensationalism in favor of a more human portrait of White during those times. Josh Brolin ("No Country for Old Men") gives an impressively textured performance as the embattled White conveying the inner conflict of a man who could never reconcile his traditional family values with the radical acceptance of the gay movement. Although he has less to do, James Franco is effective in showing Smith's ambivalence toward Milk's increasingly high profile. Also surprisingly good are Emile Hirsch ("Into the Wild") as street punk-turned-gay rights activist Cleve Jones and former child actress Alison Pill as lesbian campaign manager Anne Kronenberg. The one fly in the ointment is Diego Luna ("Mister Lonely") who plays Milk's lover Jack Lira as a pathetic co-dependent.
Nonetheless, it is Penn who brings his chameleonic skill to the fore as Milk. His natural intensity is offset by an affability that is at once compelling and heartbreaking. More importantly, he provides the gravitas necessary to the tragedy of a voice that was silenced far too soon. Van Sant and Black do provide moments that seep into manipulation, such as the opera leitmotif and the inspiration provided by a wheelchair-bound teenager, but the resulting excesses are forgivable given the power and relevance of the subject. Strongly recommended.