Milk (2008)
Directed by Gus Van Sant
The true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man ever elected to public office. In San Francisco in the late 1970s, Harvey Milk becomes an activist for gay rights and inspires others to join him in his fight for equal rights that should be available to all Americans.
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What critics compared Milk to
Bravely, Milk also depicts intimate, loving homosexual relationships, with Franco, Hirsch and Diego Luna all in Brokeback Mountain mode.
It’s no Brokeback Mountain, though.
It comes on the heels of Brokeback Mountain, the most successful mainstream movie about homosexuality up to this point, and an Academy Award Best Picture nominee that lost (surprisingly) to Crash.
There are no hallowed clinches à la Brokeback Mountain; every gay smooch doesn’t carry the weight of the world.
Gus Van Sant’s 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.
Besides the fact that Van Sant and Pennâs endearing, indelible portrayal of Milk might personalize a gay man for Middle America in much the same way Brokeback Mountain did three years ago, there is also the obvious correlation between the recent Proposition 8 vote in California and a similar struggle, as told in Milk, over Californiaâs Proposition 6 initiative, which sought to remove gay and lesbian teachers from public schools.
The film, representing a culmination of 10 years of storytelling, has our heroic Avengers teaming up with the Guardians of the Galaxy in doing battle with giant purple alien villain Thanos (played in a semi-recognizable motion-capture performance by Josh Brolin, in the actor’s best villain murderous turn since Milk.)
For Dafoe it’s unexpected, though: Seeing him play such a humane, sturdy fellow is as disorienting as Sean Penn’s saintly beaming in Milk.
In the tedious remake of All the King’s Men, Penn went in for Method-y pauses in the scenes of Willie Stark finding his soapbox voice: He seemed too inward an actor to play a natural rabble-rouser.
He exhibits a transparency missing from his last go at a speechifying political role e_SEmD Willie Stark, in 2006’s gassy All the King’s Men — and a playfulness that harks all the way back to Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
(And far removed from his portrayal of another assassinated politician, the corrupt Willie Stark of the 2006 All the King's Men.) Milk's personality is a force of nature, scooping us up and sweeping us along, as if we, too, are marching right beside him, protesting intolerance.
In recent years, Sean Penn has been condensing into a black hole of an actor—his performances in Mystic River and All the King's Men were so studiedly "powerful" that they swallowed up the surrounding movie.