Sean Penn wins Oscar for Best Actor in Milk

Inspiring human story in Milk
By AMY BIANCOLLI HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Nov. 25, 2008, 6:33PM

Gus Van Sants Milk invites comparison with influential gay-themed films of the last 20 years: Longtime Companion, Brokeback Mountain or an earlier Van Sant Film, My Own Private Idaho. Others will consider it in light of Proposition 8, the newly passed California ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage.
But this isnt a niche film — no more than any movie set during the genesis of a civil rights movement is a niche film. Its message isnt limited to politics or social activism, though they do eat up much of the plot. It is, at its core, an inspiring human story about an impish, charismatic man who lived and loved and fought to do both out in the open.
Watching Milk felt a bit, for me, like watching Titanic. History tells us the ship sank in the end. It also tells us that San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, the states first openly gay elected public official, was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone on Nov. 27, 1978. Every inch of the plot is suffused with anticipated grief; with each passing year, the milestone tolls like a bell.
It wouldnt hurt if the actor playing him didnt disappear so completely into the role. As Milk, Sean Penn turns in one of the toughest and most disarming performances of his career. He exhibits a transparency missing from his last go at a speechifying political role e_SEmD Willie Stark, in 2006s gassy All the Kings Men — and a playfulness that harks all the way back to Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Van Sant, evoking the 1970s down to the last bell-bottom, seems equally transformed. This marks his fifth straight feature to examine the dead or the dying, but thats the only notable link between this movie and, say, the stylized ennui of Paranoid Park. Its as though hes emerged from a long, meandering and intensely morbid daydream.
Over the years hes alternated his smaller and stranger works with more conventional fare (Finding Forrester), but Im not sure Milk classifies as either. Theres a spring to its step, a cinematic joi de vivre, that suggests a viewpoint shockingly close to optimism — and Penns scenes with James Franco, as longtime love Scott Smith, are as tender as anything Hollywood cranked out this year. And yet this is a film about an out-there homosexual activist and his band of varyingly flamboyant acolytes — theres really no way around it. If this classes as a mainstream movie, then the mainstream has come a long way.
Milk opens on 1978, as the title activist — hair matted, yellow shirt loosened at the neck — slumps over a tape recorder in his San Francisco apartment. This is only to be played in the event of my death by assassination, he dictates with weariness and precision. If a bullet should enter my brain, let it destroy every closet door. Then we cut straight to news footage of the citys then-Board of Supervisors President, Dianne Feinstein, announcing that Milk and the mayor are dead.
From that grim beginning, Dustin Lance Blacks screenplay backs up eight years — to a flirty pick-up on the New York subway platform where Harvey first meets Scott. They fall in love, move to Frisco and open a camera shop on Castro Street, where Milk founds a gay merchants association, launches several runs for office and, in 1977, finally wins. He leads the fight against Proposition 6, an effort to fire gay teachers at California public schools.
At each bend he draws young gays into his orbit: the geeky-cute hustler who went on to found the NAMES Project (a very sporting Emile Hirsch); the suffering teen who phones one night, contemplating suicide. Somehow, Milk implants hope in those whove lost it. Somehow, Penn plays him as a feisty charmer so winning and lifelike that youll regard him as a friend before its over. And youll want to light a candle when he dies.
amy.biancolli@chron.com


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[buddyholly429]

God bless Harvey Milk.

[babyycat]

perhaps everyone should be gay for just one day and then say what you just said.Your SS remarks is what brings hate into the world.Its time we loved one another no matter what they happen to be..So mr.gopconservative i love you and will pray for you... I hope you can do the same for me.... By the way iam not gay. I just dont like bullies picking on people....

[jako023]

@buddyholly429 thats a little contradictory, cause God hates homosexuals? dont you find?

[majesticmaniac]

I dont hate gays...I just dont agree with them....

[MAMJAM55]

@622park No that was a theory, a simple theory. Gays not being natural, oh thats science, because it was tested. 2 years ago a bunch of Stanford scientists fed mercury to these birds who were slowly losing numbers in population. By the time it was mating season, males went with males and vice versa. Africans being subhuman was a theory, by a man who was very sick. Everyone believed him including Queen Victoria. That man was Darwin

[622park]

@MAMJAM55

"Science" once proved that Africans were subhuman.

[MAMJAM55]

@MAMJAM55 Im an African Canadian, why are you calling me a Nazi? Im agaisnt homosexuality in itself because I am religious, but I am with gay rights. Because we live in a country where we can do what we want as long as its not a menace to society. But yeah science proves gays arent normal...justa sayin

[jaidenrew311]

@MAMJAM55

Nazi skin head prick..im not gay but gays dont bother me. nazi skin head pricks do though. this isnt 1940's germany douche bag.

[JinNOSify]

"Can two men reproduce?"

Milk: "No, but God knows we keep trying!"

[MAMJAM55]

Learn science and then youll know why gays are not normal

[thevintagekid69]

@2taggs2 who gives a shit whether someone is gay or not?



[gregchance324]

This was a beautiful tribute to a great man and i am not afraid to admit that i cryed more than once during this movie