The life and death of a martyr

Milk
Review by Nathan Weinbender

Gus Van Sant has been trying to get “Milk” made for the last fifteen years, and in that span of time various actors—Robin Williams, Richard Gere, James Woods—have been considered for the role of Harvey Milk, a San Francisco city supervisor who was the country’s first openly gay public official.

But now that the film has been made, it’s impossible to imagine anyone but Sean Penn playing Milk. Penn is one of our finest actors, and this is without a doubt his best performance. He inhabits the character so concretely that there are long stretches during the film where we simply forget he is acting: Penn does not portray Harvey Milk, he is Harvey Milk.

Watch the documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk” and you’ll see what I mean. Study how the real Milk behaved and then note that every aspect of Penn’s performance—his appearance, his accent, his speech pattern, his hand gestures, his facial expressions—mirrors Milk just perfectly. Yet this is not a mere impersonation. Penn is so warm, so affable, so sincere, so human, so complex that he draws us into the film and into Milk’s universe. It is a rich performance, filled with wonderful little quirks and idiosyncrasies.

Take, for instance, the moment when Milk first learns he has won the election for supervisor: A mix of surprise and ecstasy and disbelief cross his face, and it feels so spontaneous, so real, and it sent a chill down my spine, because with such a simple gesture I was convinced that this is one of the finest performances I’ve ever seen.

The film begins in 1972, when Milk, a former insurance salesman, moved to the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco and opened a camera store with his lover Scott Smith (James Franco). Fed up with the stringent, discriminatory laws against homosexuals, Milk became a vocal advocate for gay rights, standing on a soapbox and shouting into a megaphone.

He gathered a devoted following, and when people begin calling him “the Mayor of Castro Street” (“I actually may have started calling myself that,” Harvey later recalls in the movie), he was inspired to campaign for State Supervisor, which he did (unsuccessfully) three separate times, and again for the State Assembly.

But it wasn’t until 1977, when Milk was 47, that his political career proved fruitful. The city’s electoral process changed that year, as supervisors were chosen based on their districts, and Milk was elected as supervisor for the Castro District. Also elected was Dan White (Josh Brolin), a former policeman who represented the clean-cut ideals of the white Middle America, and who had serious moral qualms with the nefarious lifestyle that Milk represented.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of “Milk” is its depiction of White, who was eventually responsible for the murders of both Harvey Milk and San Francisco mayor George Moscone. The film does not vilify him or hold him in contempt, instead quietly examining his demeanor and behavior, so perfectly mannered, and allowing us to decide what motivated his crimes.

Was he really intolerant of gays, or was he himself a closet case who hid behind his moral values and used sudden violence as a way to distract himself from the fact? Or was he just emotionally unstable, and fed up with supporting his family on such a meager salary? Or was he simply tired of always being in the shadow of Harvey Milk?

Brolin is very good here, and his is one of several brilliant supporting performances in the film—Emile Hirsch as one of Milk’s hangers-on; Diego Luna as Milk’s eccentric Spanish lover; Denis O’Hare as John Briggs, a state legislator who supports Prop 6, a controversial initiative that will prohibit gays from acquiring teaching positions; and Franco, who wants Harvey to choose him over his ambitious political career.

What these actors do is quite remarkable, creating living, breathing characters in short periods of time. And although Penn is at the center of the story, he doesn’t chew the scenery or steal scenes or distract our attention away from the other actors or allow the other characters to be sucked into gravitational pull of his performance. It’s exhilarating to see so many superb actors working together on the screen.

“Milk,” too, is a triumph for Van Sant, who, since hitting his commercial peak with “Good Will Hunting,” has mostly defined himself to modest, low-budget pictures like “Elephant,” “Gerry” and “Paranoid Park.” This is his masterpiece, and nothing he has done before would have suggested that he could be such a grand conductor of character, style and story.

When the film ends and we see footage of the real Harvey Milk, celebrating after his historical political victory, it is both poignant and shocking—poignant because we have suddenly become painfully aware of Milk’s mortality, and shocking because we realize how uncanny Penn’s performance has been. “Milk” is a marvelous film, and a touching portrait of a remarkable man. It’s also the best American film I’ve seen so far this year.

Grade: A+

Directed by Gus Van Sant. Written by Dustin Lance Black. Starring Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna, James Franco, Alison Pill, Victor Garber and Denis O’Hare. R; 128m.