Uplifts just as much as it enlightens.

Rating: Null/10 (4 February 2009)

Since the earliest counterculture movements of the 1960's, America has been a country divided on many issues, the least of which being laws and rights put in place to govern the homosexual communities throughout its states. Like those that would follow in his marches of protest, Harvey Milk is an icon of his generation- or rather the ideas that both him and his immediate crowd believed in. While set around some forty years in the past, residing within a culture that has jumped some hurdles to reach where we are now, there still remains a certain poignancy to Milk's image of personal determination for justice; in fact, he's the perfect cinematic superhero. Such is director Gus Van Sant's strongest pulling point here; rather than sell out a cheap, soulless biopic that sticks to making messages and delivering historical facts, Milk instead plays out as a compelling and at times harrowing tale of passion for equality that takes time out of its political reservations to deliver a potent biographical portrait.
Harvey Milk certainly didn't think he'd make it to his fiftieth birthday, so while there's doubt that he might even have survived to the age of ninety is a matter of speculation, but there's certainly no denying his importance within today's society, forty years onward. For the most part, Van Sant stays committed to this truth; the movie starts out at the turning point of Milk's life where he turns forty and relocates to San Francisco in order to find meaning in his life. Met with a large amount of disdain and prejudice he often found in his home state, Milk is soon pushed to make a stand against the thriving bigotry residing within America's conservative states that demean him and those closest to his own lifestyle.
Harvey would go on to call them the "us's"; for Harvey, he saw himself fighting for those suffering the same injustices as himself not just for fellow homosexuals but also for the people who simply did not belong to the key suburban demographic; those left at the sidelines picking at the scraps of the majority. This key theme allows Milk to reach beyond its ostensible politics and touch the hearts of a much more general audience, thus bridging the gap between Harvey's personal afflictions and those of his listeners. It's something the real figure would implement into his speeches when talking to a broader crowd, and it works just as well here, delivering a story that stays true to its cause but not to the point where the result is polarising or esoteric.
The rest of Harvey's story, as they say, is history- and Milk does well to detail that story with historical fact without leaving out firm, engaging narrative to boot. Part of what makes Milk as compelling as it is lies in Van Sant's willingness to delve beyond the message of his central character and more into the man himself. Indeed, while there have been biopics in abundant measures over the past few months, none of those can claim a character quite like Harvey himself. Sean Penn's portrayal here is in remarkable in that it warrants recognition but not because it ostensibly reeks of a pandering Academy nature. No, instead Penn becomes a persona immediately discernible from those he has done before in as much of a naturally timid manner to which one can perform as such a recognisable, larger than life figure.
Both Penn, and his co-star for the first third of the movie James Franco also deliver a romance that is unfiltered -cinematically speaking- by taboo or restraint; not only does it give the film a warm core to begin Milk's story with, but it also reaffirms the themes of Milk's ideals, that homosexuality should be nothing to be lynched for- Van Sant takes this into account and delivers a series of scenes which for all intents and purposes do not draw attention to themselves in an overt manner. Sure enough, there is relatively potent shock value present within the couple's first on-screen kiss, but such moments aren't played in order to warrant strong reactions; they are soft, dignified, and most importantly, human portrayals- something which homosexuality doesn't see much of when printed onto the big screen.
In the end, such moments give Milk its centrepieces and do more to reaffirm Harvey Milk's message more than his broad speeches, marches and political activism could ever achieve; here Van Sant sets out to humanise the dehumanised, and achieves his goal. Indeed, as a tribute to a man that set out on his own to change his country for the better, Milk feels potent and credible but not at the expense of telling a good story. Granted there are a few narrative issues involving the general pacing of the script, yet Milk retains, for the most part, a strong, compelling story to match alongside its ideas and characters. Of course, we've all seen the same thing done over and over again, based upon fact or not, yet this underdog swimming against the current does extremely well in sticking to basics and delivering that final punch line of personal triumph resulting in a feature that uplifts just as much as it enlightens.

A review by Jamie Robert Ward (http://www.invocus.net)