Penn’s Magnificence Keeps Milk Alive
Right on the heels of turning 40, Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) and Scott Smith (James Franco) relocate from New York to San Francisco to start a new life together. It is 1973 and things seem perfect for the openly gay couple, the duo opening up a camera store right in the heart of the city’s Castro District.
Josh Brolin and Sean Penn in Focus Features' Milk
Fast forward to 1977 and Milk, after three failed attempts, has just been elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for District 5, an area that includes the Castro, becoming the first openly gay man to be voted into public office in the United States. It is a meteoric rise for the community organizer and figurehead, and when he’s sworn into office by Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) in January of 1978 the future for both he and his constituents appears limitless.
Those with an even passing knowledge of American political history know this was sadly not the case. After orchestrating the defeat of the vile Proposition 6 (which would have made it legal to remove and ban homosexuals and their supporters from their teaching and supervisory positions in all publicly funded schools), Milk and Mayor Moscone were gunned down by former city supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin) just 20 days after this victorious state-wide vote.
None of this is meant to be a spoiler. That said, just in case you didn’t know about any of this it’s not remotely like acclaimed iconoclastic director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Paranoid Park) goes out of his way to hide this particular third act tragedy. The film opens with Milk recording the very words the world were only supposed to hear if he were assassinated, the entire picture one long flashback disco dancing its way through the years as if it were happily twirling around a twinkling crystal ball.
Personally, as good as the picture is (and, at times, it is excellent) I’m not sure this was the right decision. While I appreciate that Van Sant eschews all of the standard biopic conventions, there is an almost blandly didactic monotony to this bordering on the frustrating. There are moments where the film plays more like a greatest hit collection than it does a feature film, each snapshot of a particular year or campaign having all the staying power of Andy Gibb coyly asking to be my everything.
Admittedly (and somewhat embarrassingly) I knew very little about Harvey Milk going in, and while it made sense for my own edification to watch Rob Epstein’s landmark 1984 Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk before viewing Milk, from an entertainment standpoint it might have been a mistake. This drama can’t help but feel a tad too inert, a bit too clinical and sedate in comparison, and no matter how much attention the filmmakers paid to detail or how lived-in the performances were I couldn’t help but think I’d just seen this same story told with far more authoritative pinpoint precision.
Still, when Milk hits the right chord it does so with borderline brilliance. The whole section chronicling the defeat of Prop 6 is monumentally compelling (a fact of which makes the cruel irony of the recent Prop 8’s passage even that more disgusting), while the sad, mostly unconsummated love story between Harvey and Scott has such touchingly poignant intimacy it moved me to tears.
As for the acting, as good as everyone is (Franco, Brolin and Emile Hirsch, in particular, are all marvelous) this movie’s ultimate success or failure rides squarely on the shoulders of Penn and he does not even come close to disappointing. This is one of the most controlled, friendly, emotional and downright loveable performances the actor has ever given. He nails the very essence of Harvey Milk (or, at least that essence I imagined from both the documentary and from my reading of some of his speeches), every movement, gesture and articulation so luminously potent and invigorating I couldn’t help but adore him. Mark my words; Sean Penn will win his second Academy Award. I guarantee it.
For the last decade or so since the failure of Finding Forester Van Sant has retreated back to his independent roots tackling everything from Columbine (Elephant) to the death of Kurt Cobain (Last Days) with an eerily simplistic elegance that’s sometimes intimidating. Making his return to a studio and to big name actors the director uses many of the stripped-down tricks garnered from those earlier productions, mixing archival footage, reenactments and writer Dustin Lance Black’s (HBO’s “Big Love”) scripted melodrama into a sometimes freewheeling cocktail of strongly potent historical biography unlike anything else this year.
Is that enough for Milk to warrant a recommendation? Sure, especially when coupled with Penn’s magnificence and the rest of the cast’s impressiveness in support. Yet I was not satisfied, at least not completely, and as much as I do want to say otherwise I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t admit to being a wee bit disappointed.
Funny thing is, based on the Harvey I’ve come to know through this film, the documentary and in my research I can’t help but think that’s just the way he’d like it. If not just because he wanted all of us to openly be ourselves and speak the truth no matter what the cost, but also because he’d probably love it if readers entered into friendly discussions – arguments – with me about it all later on. Even better? I can’t even semi-disagree.
- review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
Additional Links
- Interview with director Gus Van Sant and writer Dustin Lance Black by Sara Michelle Fetters
- Milk Theatrical Trailer
