REVIEW | A Hero for Our Time: Gus Van Sant’s “Milk”

Unlike “Brokeback Mountain,” which achieved crossover success by sidestepping identity politics and foregrounding tragic romance, “Milk” makes its social and political intervention explicit as early as its opening credit sequence, which features archival footage of police raids of gay bars and clubs intercut with historic newspaper clippings. Van Sant incorporates stock footage throughout the film, and with the great cinematographer Harris Savides (who also shot Van Sant’s Bela Tarr inspired “Death Trilogy”) he’s given much of the movie’s 35mm material a 16mm grain. Without explicitly aping a documentary aesthetic, Van Sant deftly transitions between historical footage and fictionalized re-enactment, much of it shot on location. From the fro-style hairdos to the Castro Theater to Anita Bryant on the television, “Milk” lovingly and respectfully reconstructs a time and place.

While locating Harvey Milk quite precisely in his era and milieu, Van Sant and Black manage to tease out the elements of his story that are most universal and ever relevant—the capacity some leaders have to mobilize bottom-up social advocacy through hope, and the triumphs and tragedies that often result from the movements they help to create.

Breaking from Van Sant’s recent dalliances with experimental art cinema, “Milk” has the basic structure of a conventional biopic. It begins in 1978, with Harvey recording a tape about his life, to be played in the event of his assassination. The tape becomes a framing device for a narrative that tracks Harvey from his fortieth birthday in 1970 New York City, where he meets his long-term lover Scott Smith (James Franco), through his election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and subsequent assassination by fellow Supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin). Van Sant has always been more of a visual artist and consummate craftsperson than a deep or original thinker, and here he benefits from the screenplay’s sturdy structure while still bringing a captivating visual flourish to the material, particularly in a few early, intimate scenes between Franco and Penn.

“Milk” is sometimes hobbled by its tendencies toward the generic—a framing device that is never contextualized in the narrative, a third-act, quite literal stab at the operatic—and it stumbles badly with its graceless depiction of Harvey’s lover Jake Lira (Diego Luna), who’s made to look rather ridiculous as he goes from crazy to crazier. But Penn’s extraordinary performance makes it easy to look past these flaws. His Harvey is an unexpected mix of playful warmth, fiery determination, and gentle melancholy. If “Milk” occasionally feels obvious, the same cannot be said of Penn: He gives the film a heartbreaking human center.

[Chris Wisniewski is a Reverse Shot staff writer and a regular contributor to Publishers Weekly.]