Milk

The irony of the film Milk being perfectly tuned to the attitude of our time and yet Proposition 8 being approved at the same time in California is not lost on me. Milk tells the story of Harvey Milk, an openly gay business man in San Francisco who was elected city supervisor in 1977. The following year Milk and the mayor were assassinated by another city official, Dan White. These events along with the controversy over the then Briggs Amendment, a Proposition banning gay teachers that California voters overturned, are recounted in Milk.
As directed by Gus Van Sant Milk has a zig-zaggy energy that catapults you to the late-70s. The film looks appropriately grainy and news footage from the era is effortlessly inserted improving the already casual flow. This isn't the Van Sant that plays with his elliptical time frame narrative (as in Elephant, Last Days, Gerry). But it's also not wallflower studio Van Sant as exemplified by Finding Forrester or Good Will Hunting. Perfect period recreations with clothes and cars and who knows what touches of CGI provide a documentary ambience that compliments the biopic details.
Sean Penn shows chameleon ability as he morphs into Milk, playing him as a thriving entrepreneur with social activist leanings. Emile Hirsh and James Franco also blend in well while Diego Luna plays a character that takes the film into a melodramatic alcove. Josh Brolin plays White as repressed, but has anybody ever really believed that "twinky defense" rap?
Milk unreels the story straight through, showing Milk moving to California, opening his camera store in the Castro District of San Fran, and his subsequent campaigns and eventual victory. Brolin and Penn face off enough times politically that White's shooting spree makes character sense. Other traditional values are turned on their head with Anita Bryant orange juice commercials and general hysteria clouding real issues. All the while Van Sant reminds us that Milk likes to listen to opera, and in the end (when the fat lady sings) his myth becomes larger than his life.