Movie: Milk
Director: Gus Van Sant
Starring: Sean Penn, James Franco, Josh Brolin
I’m torn on Milk, the Gus Van Sant movie that explorers the impact activist and politician Harvey Milk had on civil rights. I feel as if the movie was superficial. I had started to write a typical movie review, but I’m not really sure that I can.
The movie starts with Milk celebrating his 40th birthday and continues on with a number of events that went on to shape the last 8 years of his life, but the events shown in the film do not really detail how and why they took place.
A few examples:
Milk and Scott (Milk’s first boyfriend in the movie) end their relationship there is no understanding as to what happened to bring about the end. After a lack of screen time, and a number of failed election bids by Milk, Scott simply declares that “he can’t do another one” and walks.
Milk and fellow politician Dan White (Josh Brolin) have an agreement to support each other, but when it comes time for a vote on a subject Milk cannot support White. While a few lines in the movie show that the issue is due to the treatment of young, displaced, individuals there is simply no exploration of the topic between the two characters.
In a climatic scene toward the end, Milk finds his second love interest, Jack, at home where Milk shows an amazing showing of emotion towards towards the person but at nowhere else in the movie can you see that Milk is truly involved and in love with Jack.
A second complain I have of the movie is the sound quality – I struggled to understand about a quarter of what Sean Penn and James Franco were saying. It sounded as if they were speaking with marbles in their mouths. Don’t get me wrong, the movie was beautify shot, one cannot tell the original 70’s footage from production work done in 2008, and the sets were fantastic, but the dialog difficulty was a stumbling block for me.
All that said, Sean Penn plays an outstanding part. While I have no knowledge of Harvey Milk’s true personality and mannerisms, Penn becomes what I could see Milk behaving like. From the hand movements to the flash of emotion in his eyes, Penn becomes another person for two hours.
I would not call this an outstanding movie. Frankly, I would call it an average movie with a truly outstanding lead actor who couldn’t lead it to greatness. While I feel the movie was average, the last 3 minutes have a very important message that should be seen by all…
Overall rating: 6.5
Update – Wandering Coyote has her review up too.
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