By: Hannah Blackman

When you think of the tough guy — the almost inarticulate anger and implosive violence of Sean Penn in Mystic River, and then see his characterization as soft, gentle Harvey Milk, you know you’ve seen Penn at his best. Gus Van Sant, in a departure from his recent films, presents a sensitive portrait of a man who knows who he is, accepts who he is, and is determined (never departing from the softness and gentility of his manner) to use political power to change a system that discriminates against gays.

But Van Sant in no way romanticizes his character.  From the moment you meet 40-year-old Harvey Milk — so lonely that he has to celebrate his birthday with a pickup in a subway — to the moment of his assassination, you feel that you have not only entered a real life but have lived a bit of history.

Harvey Milk’s private life was often in chaos, but he believed in his cause: to be respected for what you do, not condemned for what you are. His impassioned plea was for others in the closet to come out — his manner was soft, his words were iron.

The irony of his life was that he died violently, not at the hand of some religious zealot but shot by a co-worker in public office who simply lost it and went berserk.

Milk plays like a docudrama, includes bits of film from actual footage at the time of the assassination, and opens with Milk talking into a tape recorder,  directing what to do in the event of his assassination, since he’s received countless threats. From there, the story goes back in history.  Milk and the pick-up lover are now a couple. They open a little shop in San Francisco’s Castro district and slowly become the hub of the gay community.  From this beginning, Milk, in his soft and non-aggressive way, begins to work toward public openness and acceptance. The path he chooses is political. He’ll work from inside the system.

The rather pathetic first scene — a man lonely enough to hunger for the kiss of a stranger — develops a character whose own inner pain understands the pain of gay adolescents everywhere who are derided, abused and unaccepted, and Harvey Milk is determined to help those kids.  Indeed, one of the most touching scenes is his conversation with a boy in the mid-west, not only physically handicapped but believing that something is terribly wrong with him. Penn develops Milk as an empathetic man simply determined to change society through what amounts to non-violent but doggedly determined action.

Slowly, simply asking for acceptance and recognizing that the way to be most effective is from a political position, he changes from that bearded, beat look to a city hall man in a suit and tie with a conventional haircut.  Even through the struggle to find political acceptance, his own personal life is always in stress. Wrong lovers, need for physical satisfaction with the wrong guy…nothing romanticized in this film. It plays totally real.

When finally some significant changes favor the gay rights movement, here comes a religious zealot, Anita Bryant, whose fanatical anger against gays throws the whole movement back, undoing advances.

Then finally, when Milk’s dogged persistence  wins his election and he takes his place in San Francisco’s politics, Penn never breaks his stride. He is the same gentle, soft man who is unwavering iron-fighting for his cause.

Josh Brolin plays Dan White, an erratic political associate who at first befriends Milk and then turns against him. What was his problem? The assassination that shook San Francisco came not from a religious fringe or a lunatic skinhead but from a severely disturbed city councilman who, as Milk infers, might even be a family man afraid to break out of the closet.

Gus Van Sant has created an almost seamless film –absorbing, historical — and Sean Penn shows his great skill in creating Harvey Milk, a terrific performance. And great music by Danny Elfman.

Will this film attract an audience beyond those involved with the gay rights movement? I think so.  There was something in these “new times” about the concern for those who have suffered discrimination.  Penn’s Milk becomes a quietly understated heroic figure who fights simply with a soft determination for his right to live his life. Always positive. Always offering hope.

An ironic factoid barely mentioned at the end of the film was that the man who killed not only Harvey Milk but Mayor Moscone of San Francisco used as his defense that he ate Twinkies and the sugar unbalanced him. He got off with only five years for a double murder, served only two, but committed suicide shortly after release.

Milk is absorbing, beautifully executed, perhaps different from anything Gus Van Sant has done recently, and one of the best films of the year.