Got “Milk”? You better because it’s up for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards later this month. I only wish we learned more about Harvey Milk the person and not just Harvey Milk the politician.
In this fact-based account, director Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting”) tells the story of Milk (Sean Penn) who went from a 40-year-old San Francisco hippie to become the first openly gay man elected to city office. We watch as Harvey builds an alliance of enthusiastic supporters, goes through relationships, and cuts off his long ponytail to put together a clean-cut façade to become a politician.
But what’s great about him is that even though he swapped flared jeans for a business-like three-piece suit, Harvey didn’t lose his inner spirit and initiatives. Never one to give in to the status quo, he’d personally run around and pick up dog poop to score votes from the people and challenge his opponents to debates. When one opponent asserts that gay teachers will in turn produce gay students, Harvey quips that if that were true there’d be a lot more nuns running around.
That kind of attitude makes Harvey endearing and inspirational along with one poignant scene where he pins a death threat on his refrigerator telling boyfriend Scottie (James Franco) that the threat is only as scary as they allow it to be.
The problem is that most of the other characters are not all that endearing. While Franco’s performance is good and is virtually in disguisable from his “Pineapple Express” stoner role, his character isn’t there when Harvey needs him the most and tells Harvey’s business acquaintance “Sorry I pissed in your pool.” He really did.
Diego Luna, as another of Harvey’s love interests, is stuck to a pouty, one-dimensional role, and Emile Hirsch and Alison Pill as Harvey’s campaign workers have some of the better performances. Unfortunately, Penn wasn’t as outstanding as I was anticipating. In fact, he’d often lapse too far into his “I am Sam” character.
The story itself was also not quite as outstanding as expected with a slow storyline. The film mostly consisted of a never-ending stretch of loss after loss during Harvey’s campaign until he finally at last won. We also know that ultimately Dan White (Josh Brolin), Harvey’s colleague, ultimately assassinates him and due to the framing device of Harvey recording his story for it to be told in the event of his assassination heightening the tension throughout the film, the actual assassination scene is very anticlimactic.
We’re also left wanting more in terms of the emotions and motives of the characters. For example, why exactly did White kill Harvey? He always seemed off-kilter, so what was he going through to make him the way he was? What did Harvey did his whole life before he got involved in politics? Why was Harvey involved in the shallow, one-dimensional relationship with Luna’s character and wasn’t he affected by what eventually happened between them? Van Sant recently told Entertainment Weekly, Harvey’s life was quite romantic but it really didn’t seem that way in the movie.
So get “Milk” but know that it’s kind of like milk. Just as you should drink it but it’s not as good as soda, you should see “Milk” but it’s not as good as the other four Best Picture nominees.
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