One extraordinary performance in one fine movie, which has the usual Hollywood self-congratulatory blemishes

Rating: 8/10 (28 December 2008)

Milk is Sean Penn's best-sustained performance since Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I'm not joking and I mean it as high praise. Penn, at least in those movies of his I've seen, starts strongly and then dives into that famous Penn intensity that some consider acting with a capital "A." In Milk, Penn early establishes Milk as smart, empathetic, self-aware, even gentle, playful and lovable. Penn doesn't lose those qualities, and adds to them sadness, commitment and shrewdness. Penn doesn't give in to what must have been a great temptation to turn Milk and Milk's issues into a Hollywood-style, self-congratulatory showboat performance. Unfortunately, Gus Van Sant does that.
The first half or so of Milk is an outstanding movie that combines acting, issues and characterization in a just about seamless manner. We get to know and like Harvey Milk. We understand where he's coming from. His authenticity as a gay man isn't played for kiss-on- the-lips shock value, just for who Milk is. His growth as a gay rights activist -- and a shrewd one -- is not presented with rants and melodrama. His defeats and then success in San Francisco politics is given to us understandably and with wit. But then we get to Proposition 6. For me, Gus Van Sant caricatures the struggle, throwing up the proponents as oily monsters, setting up Milk as the sole voice of humor and reason, who scores points while all those coiffured PTA moms register disapproval. (This isn't to minimize the importance of the issues, how loathsome many of the advocates for Proposition 6 were or the role of Milk in winning a great victory for basic human rights.) The last third of Milk, for me, changes from an intensely sympathetic story of an interesting man and the issues he fought for to the kind of brave screed for human rights and justice that the Hollywood establishment latches on to only when the danger has past and it's safe for them to take a stand. Not only does Van Sant seem to forget Milk as a human being, but we also find ourselves in the Hollywood version of processing Milk for sainthood.
It seems to me that homosexuality in Hollywood films has for a long time been played either for easy laughs or for tawdry or vicious melodrama. Then Hollywood entered it's brave phase of gay love, with young men metaphorically running across the fields to each other in slow motion (sometimes on horse back), or whispering dreamily to each other of their hopes and plans while wondering why people can't just let them alone.
Milk gets it right in my view. Harvey Milk flirts, gets horny, kisses right on the smacker, laughs, loves to jump in bed with someone he either loves or who just turns him on, has love problems, believes in issues that are important to him, makes good choices and bad choices. Well, gay or straight, male or female, don't most of us? Sean Penn makes Milk not just believable but matter of fact. It's a terrific performance.