Milk doesn't make it

I had a window of time to catch a film and it happened that Milk by Gus Van Sant was playing. Frankly the publicity about Sean Penn and James Franco kissing turned me off. Jeff Spicolli and the stoner from Pineapple Express?

But Van Sant used some restraint. Unlike the woman who reviewed this movie on Fox describing Harvey Milk as simply "a politician in the 60's," avoiding the G word, I'll tell you he was gay. Meanwhile an upstanding citizen didn't like seeing a perv make more progress than himself so it led to tragedy. But since I didn't know the specifics of that I won't post a spoiler here.



The film has humor and apart from using newsreel and stock footage as the establishing shots between many scenes and one interesting mirror shot at a critical point this is a very simple presentation as Gus Van Sant films go. I think he realizes non arty types have to watch this movie. I had heard about it back when Robin Williams was supposed to play Milk. As good as he is, I think it's more interesting to see the tougher persona of Penn play against type the first openly gay American politician. He never breaks or compromises character, but when he finally shows that he can be cutthroat and doesn't feel guilty about it we accept that more easily from Penn without judgement. Even if you know the cutthroat choice meant his power wouldn't last long.