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Milk

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Cert: 15

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Dir: Gus Van Sant. Cast: Sean Penn, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsch, Diego Luna, Alison Pill, Lucas Grabeel, Denis O'Hare

 

Description: Haunting biopic of the first openly gay man elected to public office in California, opening in 1970 New York City where Harvey meets the love of his life, Scott Smith. The couple moves to San Francisco and attempts to set up a camera shop, only to meet fierce resistance and prejudice from other shopkeepers. So Harvey mobilizes the local gay community and boycotts businesses, which dare to discriminate against people because of their sexuality. Weathering the inflammatory remarks of Anita Bryant and Senator John Briggs, Harvey encourages his campaign team led by manager Anne Kronenberg to never give up.

Country: US. 2008. 128mins

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Penn is the great pretender in Milk

 

Pink power: Sean Penn as the activist Harvey Milk, who took to the streets of San Francisco in the Seventies to defend the city’s gay community from the city’s police force. He was shot dead in 1978, aged 45

Affectionate: Sean Penn turns in a winning performance

Protest: activists in Milk

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It’s official: Sean Penn is the new Robert De Niro. As far back as Taps in 1981, he had the ugly beauty and psychotic verve; what he’s developed in the past few years is an eye for a great script. As biopics go, this portrait of gay activist Harvey Milk isn’t quite up there with, say, Raging Bull. Still, it is smart, sexy and very funny. It also makes Penn look wonderful and he returns the favour.

What most people know about Milk is that he was the first openly gay politician in America and that he was shot dead in 1978. Gus Van Sant’s film insists we get to know him better and, tweaking the facts only slightly, uses his love affair with a cute young hippie called Scottie (talented teen heart-throb James Franco) to reel us in.

In between scenes showing Milk dictating a last will and testament (Milk knew his actions would make him a target for the murderously “insecure”) we watch as the straitlaced, 39-year-old Harvey picks up Scottie in a New York subway. The pair are strongly attracted to each other, and the mood is infectious.

It’s become trendy, since Brokeback Mountain, for heterosexuals to swoon over same-sex kisses but I’ve not felt as aroused by a screen couple since Daniel Day-Lewis reached for Gordon Warnecke in My Beautiful Laundrette.

Anyhow, the two move to San Francisco, where Harvey starts smoking dope, opens a camera shop and becomes the self-proclaimed Mayor of Castro Street, defending the city’s gays from the brutal police force and forging links with trade unionists, blacks, Latinos and “seniors”.

He’s energetic, witty and what you might call an armchair lech (he can resist, but not resist complimenting, sassy boys in tight trousers). He runs for office several times and his workaholic ways drive him and Scottie apart. He assembles a committed if somewhat cliquey team; acquires a new Latino lover, with whom he is careless and borderline racist; finally becomes a supervisor; successfully takes on figures of the religious Right who want to oust gay teachers from their jobs; encourages California’s gays to “out” themselves and, having previously tolerated odd-ball, conservative colleague Dan White (brilliantly played by Josh Brolin), turns on him.

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Throughout it all, the loose-limbed “connection” between him and Scottie remains unbroken.
It seems apt, given Milk’s love of openness (“Privacy is the enemy!”), that his own, often unseemly private life plays such an important part in the film. Compare and contrast with George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck, also about a liberal crusader bent on protecting the civil rights of those deemed different. On principle, it seems, Clooney refuses to allow us behind the scenes of Edward Murrow’s life — we are simply expected to marvel at his daring public acts and eloquent rhetoric. There’s so much more to Milk.

That Penn makes such a good job of slipping into the shoes of a gay activist may surprise some of you. Mickey Rourke (his main rival for the best performance of the year) apparently told a friend that “Penn is one of the most homophobic men I know”. If nothing else, Penn is famously macho. Thanks to his pugnacious mane of hair and huge biceps, we often fail to notice his small frame and beaky nose.

Here, ever the good method actor, he has lost a ton of weight, flattened his follicles and looks wizened (Milk was 45 when he died; Penn is 48 but actually appears older). Imagine Robin Williams in The Birdcage with the frail, pixie limbs of Quentin Crisp.

The twist is that there’s nothing camp about the performance. Penn gives us, instead, a man who likes changing costumes but has done with wearing a mask. Whether involved in flirtation or debate, everything about his expressions and voice feels organic.

When we see a photo of the “real” Milk, at the end of the film, we experience a shock of recognition. That sad yet tickled grin, the kind of smile that makes you want to smile back: Penn has nailed it.

This is a topical film, and not just because California, via Mormon-backed anti-gay-marriage law Proposition 8, is currently experiencing another wave of homophobia. Listening to Milk, he often sounds uncannily like Barack Obama. Van Sant (who has always mixed mainstream dramas with more controversial experiments) obviously wants to make a film with a wide reach. Hope is the emotion that he’s trying to, well, milk.

Gorgeously relaxed visuals (plus exquisite use of documentary footage) are an added bonus. At one point, we see a boom mike bobbing at the top of the frame. Milk, a proud amateur who learned to rage efficiently against the machine, would surely appreciate the gesture. Cock-ups may maketh the man.

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