As reaction intensifies against the banning of homosexual marriage in California’s recently passed Proposition 8, a brilliant new film set in 1970s San Francisco resonates with modern relevancy.
“Milk,” a biographical chronicle of one of the gay civil rights movement’s most important martyrs, puts a relatable human face on a controversial social issue. While some might resist comparing Harvey Milk to Martin Luther King Jr., both of these assassinated activists inspired the members of their respective oppressed minority groups to empower themselves and change a nation.
Dustin Lance Black writes and Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting”) directs an affecting, revealing and frankly partisan fusion of the personal and the political. It traces the last eight years of Milk’s life as he evolved from a once-closeted drone to the so-called “Mayor of Castro Street” and then city supervisor, the first openly gay man ever to be elected to major government office in this country.
Sean Penn delivers the most endearingly sensitive performance of his magnificent career, making the title character a whole person beyond his achievements. Avoiding both effeminate caricature and politically correct whitewash, he informs this unashamed homosexual with a dignity, sensuality and warmth that sharpen the tragedy of his murder — which looms over the film from its start.
James Franco plays Scott Smith, the love of Harvey’s life. It is through this relationship that Milk is radicalized to help head the fight for the individual freedom he finds promised in America’s fundamental principles. With Diego Luna as later lover Jack Lira, Emile Hirsch as his young lieutenant in the community Cleve Jones, and Josh Brolin as Milk’s fellow city supervisor and eventual killer Dan White, the superb cast dramatizes real history with idiosyncratic detail.
From the struggle against police harassment in the early ’70s to the defeat of notorious orange juice theocrat Anita Bryant and a California proposition that would have forbidden gay teachers, the movie ticks through the timeline of cultural change that would lead to Milk’s violent death at age 48 in 1978.
Rob Epstein’s riveting 1984 documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk” won an Academy Award for depicting this material. But today’s fictionalized account, especially thanks to Penn’s remarkable work, fleshes out those involved in a way that a documentary can’t.
And, despite the sad fate of the protagonist, his uplifting personality and influential legacy keep “Milk” floating.
Quick Info
“Milk”
5 out of 5 Stars
Stars: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, James Franco
Director: Gus Van Sant
Rated R for language, some sexual content and brief violence.
Running Time: 128 minutes
