Penn sustains Milk

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In Milk, director Gus Van Sant’s love letter to the early gay rights movement and its unlikely leader, Harvey Milk, Sean Penn fully morphs into the slain city supervisor of San Francisco. Gone with the well-trod creases on his forehead is the gruff, leathery Sean Penn we’ve seen of late. This Penn is all charisma and smiles and optimism. As a camera store owner-turned-political activist and, eventually, a city supervisor of San Francisco in 1977 and ’78, Penn recreates the trials and the tragedy of America’s first openly gay elected official, from his 40th birthday to his murder eight years later at the hands of fellow supervisor Dan White, who in a rage gunned Milk down after assassinating Mayor George Moscone.

As Van Sant portrays it, White’s murder of Moscone and Milk were not hate crimes, but the desperate act of a confused man at the end of his political rope, and Josh Brolin conveys White’s antipathy and anger toward himself and his lack of political power in a tragic turn. No, the real hate crime in Milk is captained by Anita Bryant—a country singer who made it stamp out any movement of homosexuals seeking equal rights and protections in the workplace—and California legislator John Briggs, who authored “Proposition 6” to ban homosexuals from working in public schools. Bryant’s smarmy, smooth country antagonism is made all the more real because she appears only in vintage newscast footage, a symbol of the prejudiced force waiting just outside Milk’s gay pride bubble.

The film is framed by Milk’s own voiceover as he speaks quietly into a tape recorder “in the event of his assassination.” Throughout Milk saw himself not as the talking head of a civil rights movement, but as its humble recruiter. “I’m Harvey Milk, and I’m here to recruit you!” was his oft-repeated opening line, each time stated with more verve than the last, even under threat of imminent death. For Milk, politics wasn’t even about winning—in fact, he lost several elections before earning his seat as a supervisor—nor was it about himself. As an opera devotee, he certainly recognized the theater of politics. And armed with a built-in message—equal rights for homosexuals—Milk was satisfied with making headlines early on. But as the film advances, so does Milk’s ambition. It’s not enough to get elected and be heard, he wants to use his power to galvanize closeted homosexuals against the Anita Bryants out there and defeat Brigg’s “Proposition 6.”

While Penn excels in the lead, certain scenes are overwritten, and even forced, the tell tale signs of screenwriter Dustin Lance Black’s relative inexperience. One overlong tracking shot of Penn kissing co-star James Franco in front of their new camera store (adorned of course with the standard “Yes, we’re open” sign) is one of those guilty pleasure tie-ins of screenwriting that to the director’s eyes ought to look too cheesy and heavy-handed on film, and yet, here it is. One confrontation between Milk and an unsympathetic patrol officer about the beating death of a gay man is shown completely in voice over. Not a terrible choice under other circumstances to speed things along, but unfortunately it snatches from Penn just the kind of scene in which he excels: an outcast voice of reason railing against aloof or corrupted authority figures. Whether it be Spicoli’s class time pizza order in Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Jimmy Markum’s hellish wailing for his dead daughter surrounded by cops in Mystic River, this stuff is right down Penn’s wheelhouse, and Milk misses a few opportunities to exploit that.

Still, Gus Van Sant’s historical patois results in a revelatory film for those invested in the gay marriage debate, and a fascinating look at a complex individual whose torch has been carried on even after his untimely death. This snapshot of the 1970s reminds us of a time not long ago when homosexuals were targeted en masse for termination in the workplace or simply dragged out of bars and arrested. And the superb ensemble—particularly a gung-ho Emile Hirsch, and, of course, Brolin—help bring the supporters and detractors of Milk’s movement to life with pitch perfect, nuanced performances. But this is Sean Penn’s show, and his transformative performance is Oscar-worthy.