Sean Penn shines as Harvey Milk in a very, very good (if not masterpiece) docu-drama

Rating: 8/10 (7 December 2008)

Sean Penn rarely plays genuinely likable people, and maybe rightfully so; his career has so many people who aren't likable, who are villainous or corruptible or just really flawed beyond repair (Mystic River and Sweet and Lowdown come to mind), that it's slightly a niche to see him in that mold. But Milk breaks it, to a small degree: we know he can play likable or genuinely good people, but it takes a role like Harvey Milk and subsequently as good a movie as Milk turns out to be to remind us how amazing he can be as one. And Harvey Milk, while not a perfect person or without one or two minor flaws (he is a politician at heart so it's impossible not to), is one of those truly heroic figures that blazed trails and formed a real community out of Castro street and San Francisco and, eventually, across the country, got a lot of people who were in the closet and were afraid to come out to rise up to the challenge of gay rights. The late Milk, 30 years later, gets the star and the movie he rightfully deserves.
And better than anything is that the picture can be accessible to those who may not go right away to see the latest gay/lesbian film (if you decided deliberately to stay away from Brokeback Mountain, then this just isn't for you either, though you probably already know that and/or aren't even reading this). Even its weakest player, Diego Luna, is at least fascinating to watch, and the entire ensemble props up Penn's fantastic work here: James Franco, Emile Hirsch, and especially, most notably, Josh Brolin as Dan White, who was a fellow city supervisor with Harvey Milk and eventually killed Milk and the mayor over a "junk-food" craze and is played by Brolin as perfectly uptight (likely closeted to boot) and who brings in a lot of nuance and subtlety to a role that could have been played in an overwrought tone or pull. Indeed, there was never a scene with Brolin that isn't less than amazing (and most of them show how well he goes head-to-head with the likes of Penn).
While my one minor complaint about the movie might be some of the broad strokes painted over Harvey's love life(s) with Franco and mainly Luna's characters (the latter especially is very two-dimensional, if that, which maybe can be blamed more on the script than the acting or direction), it doesn't make Milk any less of a must-see. Van Sant, as director, pulls out what is a comeback from the years of unadulterated art-house experimental films (some great, some not) into what is closest for him for being mainstream. He connects with the material and the subject matter so strongly, and not just as a given for being homosexual; he embraces the "inspiring political saga" story and does very well mixing together the heartfelt dramatization with the real footage on the news of monsters like Anita Bryant and the coverage on the news.
Another director might have made a good bio-pic out of this, but Van Sant, after navigating through a first half which is always interesting if slightly rushed, crafts most of all a very powerful, incendiary docu-drama that has obvious relevance for the current events (Prop 8 in California), but is never less than immediate anyway. The homosexual community needs a movie like Milk just as much as they needed the man, a voice in the "machine" for their concerns and problems. It's an important, if imperfect, piece of American "issue" film-making.