Milk

After four loose, experimental films (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days, Paranoid Park), Gus Van Sant makes a return for the mainstream with his biopic of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US.  As biopics go it's fairly conventional, detailing Harvey's move to San Francisco, his battle for gay rights, eventual election and assassination.

Despite this conventionality, it's an expertly crafted film.  Van Sant uses real news footage and grainy camerawork to create a verité feel to the endeavour and Dustin Lance Black's empathic screenplay is structured so as to ensure that the audience feels the momentum of Milk's campaign.  Much has been made of Sean Penn's nuanced lead performance, but he's aided by one of 2008's most impressive ensemble casts.  Josh Brolin, rounding out a stellar year after No Country For Old Men and W., plays Supervisor Dan White and brings real pathos to a difficult role.  James Franco is beautiful, heartbreaking even, as Milk's long-term boyfriend Scotty and Emile Hirsch give yet another brilliantly realised turn as Cleve Jones, a young runaway who finds drive and purpose in Milk's campaign for equal rights.

Several negative reviews have pointed to the fact that Gus Van Sant seems to reluctant to acknowledge Milk's promiscuity, since the film alludes to only two relationships, with Scotty and, later, with Mexican Jack Lira (played with maniacal energy by Diego Luna).  Yet a catelogue of Milk's hook-ups would, I think, have distracted from the main narrative drive and made for a much more scattershot production.  As it is, Gus Van Sant's return to mainstream cinema is an unmitigated success.  The parallels between California reinstituting Proposition 8 today and Milk's own battle against Proposition 6, an initiative that sought to prohobit all gay men and women (and those that supported them) from working in public schools, are obvious.  Indeed, Dustin Lance Black's moving speech at this year's Oscars as he accepted his award for Best Original Screenplay showed how timely the movie's release was.