Wonderful film; to be embraced for its study of an outsider trying to get his voice heard during a somewhat increasingly volatile time.

Rating: 8/10 (11 December 2009)

I think it's pretty fair to say, right at the beginning of this, that the man whose story it is we focus on in this film is dead. I know sometimes there's that conflicted sense of not wanting to know an awful lot about a famous individual going into a biopic all about them, particularly their fate, but in this case of Harvey Milk; who's the focus of Gus Van Sant's film from last year entitled Milk, everything is laid out in black and white very early on dispelling any doubt on whether the experience would be less-satisfying had you not known. Van Sant wants you to know he died a death in 1978, and he has every confidence in his execution of those final eight years of Milk's life that will make for an engaging and frightening experience anyway. The pleasing thing is, Van Sant is right on the money in this regard as his film is wonderful.
Here is a Van Sant biopic we can cherish more-so we can despise or get frustrated at. Given the man's previous film was the sporadically received Last Days, which was again a film about a real person and documented their eventual downfall, or decline, into death of some description – you'd be forgiven for going into Milk with some doubts, particularly if you didn't take to the mumbling, sophomoric, and symbolist driven 2005 feature. Milk gives its subject room to breath, eight years worth in fact, and tells the story of an everyday guy who hadn't quite yet found his niché in life, but at forty years old, is still on the hunt.
Going into the project, Van Sant had a lot to digest. His looking at a very specific period in a famous individual's life echoes what he did in Last Days with Kurt Cobain (supposedly), but the eight years out of forty-eight he observes here means that encompassing two relationships with separate male lovers; a power-house nation coming to terms with minority based people garnering strength and power through politics and a general making up of history as he went along on Milk's behalf are wonderfully captured and delivered with enough emotional and dramatic weight to label it a success.
The titular role is played by the Oscar winning Sean Penn, a small but optimistic character who enjoys jumping head first into situations and predicaments no matter how seemingly dangerous or potentially hostile they might be. Milk is established as a man without much fear; the opening newsreel footage reporting his assassination sees the film jump straight into a very private and intimate moment in Harvey's life as we observe him recording his life story on a cassette tape which is, on his strict instruction, only to be played when he is dead – something that it seems Harvey is suspecting might be quite soon. It's an early example, indeed in the first scene, of Harvey confronting doubt and potential disaster head-on without shying away. Later on, he will receive death threats in the form of crude drawings displaying harm and mutilation of his person; but while those close to him panic, Milk faces facts and accepts people won't like him, indeed he seems to want to engage back with the perpetrators – criticising the pictures for lacking subtlety and humour but praising for effort none-the-less.
The film is mostly a look at equality, and how most of those whose views and opinions on others restrict equality pushing through to become universal. Harvey Milk is just another guy attempting to make good with an American dream infused ideology, the fact that he's homosexual and involved in politics shouldn't matter – if the man is charismatic and people enjoy what it is he has to say in regards to his ideas, there ought not be a problem. Like every other working individual in America at that time, Milk is attempting to go bigger and better in a chosen career; a career he stumbles into when he and his then lover Scott Smith (Franco) move to San Fransisco from New York City and Milk becomes involved in gay activism. Harvey's predicament sees him forced into taking a position on the outskirts of society because of what he is and everyone's attitudes to what he is, while observing everything play out makes for genuinely interesting viewing. He is living his own American Dream after stumbling into his field of expertise and will not let anyone stop him from giving it a try.
As an individual working within a choice of career in which your opinions and the manner in which you get them across depends on whether you, as a lone individual, succeed or not; Penn plays Milk less-so an extrovert or a show off, but a really charismatic and warm individual who just seems to talk sense. The film finds room to encompass Milk's romantic relationships running along side his more professional ones, but neither ever really detract nor distract from the other as the political work begins to overpower his home life; this in turn takes its agonising toll. Van Sant treats a lot of the more sensitive material with the greatest of respect, and that sense you're viewing a period in this man's life through that proverbial microscope as things go from strength to strength during which a man finds his form is fascinating. Certainly a film not to be missed.