Filmed on location in San Francisco, Milk is Gus Van Sant's account of the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the USA, who was assassinated by another politician. Sean Penn (in an Oscar winning performance) plays the titular character Harvey Milk, with Josh Brolin and Emile Hersch slotting into the other main roles. Harvey Milk's life has been the subject of an Oscar winning documentary, but this is the first time his story has been fictionalised. It should be accurate however, with many of his friends and colleagues appearing on camera.
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This was always going to be good – it's got Sean Penn (Dead Man Walking) in it and director Van Sant is a master of both arty indies (like Paranoid Park) and more commercial fayre (Good Will Hunting). But it's better than good – it's awesome.
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Brolin's work is superlatively expressive of the inchoate impulses roiling inside his sorry character. But good as most of the cast is, the show belongs squarely to Penn.
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It's a total triumph, brimming with humor, heart, sexual heat, political provocation and a crying need to stir things up, just like Harvey did. If there's a better movie around this year, with more bristling purpose, I sure as hell haven't seen it.
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Sean Penn never tries to show Harvey Milk as a hero, and never needs to. He shows him as an ordinary man, kind, funny, flawed, shrewd, idealistic, yearning for a better world.
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There's nothing terribly wrong with Milk, it's just that its celebration of a culture and a neighborhood, its valentine to the early days of gay rights activism, is mostly more conventional than compelling.
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The film is superbly crafted, covering huge amounts of time, people and the zeitgeist without a moment of lapsed energy or inattention to detail.
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Milk thoroughly deserves all of the press ink that will doubtless be spilt over it. Wear your 'Vote Penn' Oscar pin with pride.
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