Best advice I can give anyone is to run out and see Milk as soon as possible. Sean Penn as gay-rights activist Harvey Milk delivers possibly his finest performance in a carreer filled with great performances. Gus Van Sant’s direction is brilliant. He brings the 1970s to life with actual street footage from the era and news snippets of Walter Cronkite, a very young Tom Brokaw, and the always tragically silly Anita Bryant. Milk’s journey is told in fictional style with documentary brush strokes, all done seamlessly and with the full weight of history to foreshadow events. Harvey Milk may very well have been in the prime of his life when he was mercilessly gunned down. He was more than a gay-rights activist, he was a businessman turned San Francisco politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in America in 1977. The struggle for gay rights, although inherently omnipresent, takes a back seat to Milk’s personal drama and the journey of some of the other characters (even the evil Dan White, well played by versatile actor Josh Brolin). But it’s clear that Milk and “the cause” are inseparable, a cause larger than any individual personal journey, a sentiment that the film echoes in near-perfect pitch. This is one of those rare films that you will want to see twice: Highly recommended.

Of further interest…

The Times of Harvey Milk (intro to 1984 Documentary).

Gus Van Sant: Elephant.