Someday in 1972, Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) and then-mistress Scott Smith left New York for San Francisco. Milk tries to go through a harsh experience in order to fulfill his life's mission one day. Milk became active in favor of LGBT rights as he became the first publicly elected gay official in California.
While making a political, historical biopic, Van Sant managed, concurrently, to make a visually beautiful, emotionally thrilling and surprisingly personal work of art.
Sean Penn gives a meticulously detailed performance as the cagey and charismatic pol, but credit should also go to Dustin Lance Black, whose script squarely locates Milk at the center of his community, his city, and his cause.
The movie's getting a lot of praise for being an "unconventional" biopic. I don't think this is true, but it's happening, I suspect, because it's NOT a biopic: It's a cause movie.
Penn's performance is inspiring, a transformation that finds the heart and soul of a historical figure and sends blood pumping through a man who has become practically deified over the decades.
Perhaps it is simply an accident of timing that puts Milk in theaters at this moment. But fate or simple fortunate timing, Milk arrives as one of the best films of 2008.
Milk is an agitprop fantasy about the selflessness of sainthood. If anybody but Penn was playing the saint, we'd probably feel as if we were being sold a bill of goods. Instead, he just about pulls it off. Such is the treachery of talent.
Penn burrows inside his character, capturing not only Milk's Long Island Jewish intonations and his gay body language but also the intensity of his beliefs and the particular mix of fear and desire through which he viewed the world.
