The passing of Proposition
8 hangs over Gus Van Sant's biopic Milk, which follows the life and death of
Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office. His legacy as
San Francisco city supervisor and martyrdom at the hands of fellow Board Of
Supervisors member Dan White are watershed moments in the ongoing battle for
gay rights in America. Prop 8 gives the film immediacy, but more importantly,
it lends some much-needed (and surprisingly heartening) perspective on how far
the movement has come, and how far it has yet to go. But a measuring stick does
not make a movie, and Milk, for all its admirable qualities, doesn't
transcend the problems inherent to biopics; it loses some of its power to the
same lumpy conventionality that scotches most cinematic attempts at
portraiture.
After his ham job as a
Huey Long-like demagogue helped sink 2006's abysmal All The King's Men, Sean Penn redeems
himself as Milk, perhaps because he's committed himself to something deeper and
more empathetic than mere imitation. His strong performance provides crucial
ballast to the winding narrative of Milk's life, which hits a lot of dead ends
and detours before his rise to political and cultural prominence. Starting in
1972, the film follows Milk as he moves with his boyfriend (James Franco) from
New York to San Francisco, where he opens a camera shop on Castro Street. Milk
watches the neighborhood as it transforms from a working-class block to the
country's most famous gay enclave, and his political fortune changes along with
it. After losing three times in various campaigns for local office, he takes
advantage of redistricting and wins a spot on the Board Of Supervisors, where
he serves for a year before White (Josh Brolin) assassinates him and mayor
George Moscone.
Once Milk finally enjoys
some political leverage, the film gets a lift from his most famous legislative
fight, a failed bid by California State Senator John Briggs (with an assist by
touring bigot Anita Bryant) to ban gays from teaching in public schools. Until
then, Van Sant excels more at defining the evolving atmosphere of Castro Street
and America in the '70s than the individuals in Milk's orbit, particularly
lovers played by Franco and Diego Luna, and a key young operative played by
Emile Hirsch. Remarkably, the film's most compelling, conflicted figure is
Brolin's White, whose frustrations and mounting psychosis over the changing
times is somehow more accessible than any of Milk's legions of followers. After
an artistic resurgence behind true independents like Gerry, Elephant, Last Days, and Paranoid Park, it's a little disappointing
to see Van Sant dial back into mainstream respectability. Had he evoked Harvey
Milk's life with the poetry that he did Kurt Cobain's, Milk might have been something
special.