Milk
First screened in December 2008 / Most recently screened and reviewed in October 2025
Director: Gus Van Sant. Cast: Sean Penn, James Franco, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Joseph Cross, Brandon Boyce, Alison Pill, Diego Luna, Kelvin Yu, Lucas Grabeel, Denis O'Hare, Victor Garber, Howard Rosenman, Stephen Spinella, Jeff Koons. Screenplay: Dustin Lance Black.

 In Brief:  Exceptional lead performance bolstered by an inspired cast, all elevated by a director and team of artisans in full control.

VOR: ⑤  Van Sant fuses avant-garde and queer-communal loyalties with new grasp of classic structure. Politically potent. Honest about the work of change.


   
Photo © 2008 Focus Features
Somehow, I hadn't seen Milk since it was in theaters, despite the framed original poster signed by Cleve Jones that lives in my office. People understandably and, I think, rightly received it in 2008 as a culminating synthesis of Van Sant's independent, pop-inspired, collage-inclined, forthrightly gay early projects and what he learned about market-friendly shapes, direct emotional hooks, and consensus-building style from his few forays into mini-major studio jobs. I think it's just as much a triumph of Van Sant's gift with top-tier actors in high-risk roles while equally honoring the collective tapestry of coordination that is endemic to most of his movies, and to any kind of progressive organizing. And while the movie may lean more heavily on The Times of Harvey Milk's template than is common even among scripted biopics with distinguished documentary antecedents (which Van Sant concedes, with honesty and gratitude, right at the top of the end credits crawl), Milk is a moving dialogue between fact and fiction and a pinnacle in Van Sant's career-long interest in blending different stocks, archives, aesthetics, and styles within his differently pastiched projects.

That it stars my most admired male actor in a transformative performance, adding even greater difficulty to the irresolvable conversation about what is or isn't Sean Penn's greatest work, only makes me love it more. (My circle knows what I mean when I say he's so good, he's practically an actress.) But Milk is just as much a high point for Van Sant, for cinematographer Harris Savides, for costumer Danny Glicker, for editor Elliot Graham, for James Franco, for Josh Brolin, for Emile Hirsch, and for several other actors in the cast.

We heard a lot in 2008 about WALL•E being the emblematic movie for the dawning Obama Era and its rhetoric of hope amid depression and disaster... often as juxtaposed to The Dark Knight as an avatar in story, style, and tone for the swagger and dolor and fear-based messaging of the Bush-Cheney armada. I think Milk is the real Obama movie of that election year, and I'm sure plenty of folks said so. I think it's also a great movie to watch at this exact second in 2025 U.S. culture, as a corrective either for complacency on the political sidelines or for a cynical if understandably cultivated dismissal of all electoral politics as hopeless. I'd forgotten how many (many) times Harvey Milk lost elections before he won, but how much indelible solidarity work coalesced amid those "failures," and how much of that eventual victory was owed to redistricting. I am glad that Milk's portrait of him is so exuberantly loving but not blind to his (or anyone's, or all of our) imperfections, even braiding together Harvey's libidinal attraction to Diego Luna's unstable character and his political attraction (maybe a little libidinal, too) to Josh Brolin's high-strung, deceptively volatile Board of Supervisors colleague as cross-cut reflections of a similar, more-errant-than-not impulse.

There are things to learn from Milk in a cautionary way but much, much more to learn and to emulate from an organizing and empathizing and bond-building perspective, no matter how the story ends. Or very much because of how it ends. Or both. It is always worth re-auditing who our friends or allies are or could be, and what we're doing to reach outside our networks with way more than self-interest in mind. Grade: A–

(I originally wrote this review on Letterboxd, where you can comment.)

(in December 2008: B+)
Academy Award Nominations and Winners:
Best Picture
Best Director: Gus Van Sant
★Best Actor: Sean Penn
Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin
★Best Original Screenplay: Dustin Lance Black
Best Costume Design: Danny Glicker
Best Film Editing: Elliot Graham
Best Original Score: Danny Elfman

Golden Globe Nominations:
Best Actor (Drama): Sean Penn

Other Awards:
Producers Guild of America Awards: Stanley Kramer Award
Screen Actors Guild Awards: Best Actor (Penn)
Writers Guild of America: Best Original Screenplay; Paul Selvin Honorary Award
Independent Spirit Awards: Best Supporting Actor (Franco); Best First Screenplay
National Society of Film Critics: Best Actor (Penn)
Los Angeles Film Critics Circle: Best Actor (Penn)
New York Film Critics Circle: Best Film; Best Actor (Penn); Best Supporting Actor (Brolin)
Boston Society of Film Critics: Best Director (Van Sant; also cited for Paranoid Park); Best Actor (Penn; tie); Best Screenplay
National Board of Review: Best Supporting Actor (Brolin)
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