Milk

Sean Penn is a revelation as gay political activist - assassinated 30 years ago. Harvey Milk arrives in San Francisco shortly after his 40th birthday from New York feeling he had done nothing of imprtance up until then, and had lived too long in the closet. In the next eight years he helped to transform the status of gay people through political activitism. He formed a gay businesses group, and gay people gathered in the Castro Disrtrict of San Francisco initially for protection from the violence of police and everyone else, then as a statement of their existence. Milk is elected to the City Board of Supervisors but makes enemies and comes up against the campaigning zeal of Anita Bryant and religious groups determined to remove all homosexuals from the public service - especially schools. Josh Brolin plays a fellow Supervisor who becomes embittered by Milk and his success on the Board. Milk always said he would never reach 50, and this prophecy comes true when the Brolin character arrives one morning and shoots both the Mayor and Milk in City Hall. How do we know all this? Harvey Milk left tapes only to be heard in the event of his assassination. The film is not melodramatic nor mawkish, and effectively intercut with period footage. Sean Penn's performance is superb, neither too over the top nor stereotypical, and yet the film manages to give the feeling for the gay lifestyle - somehow normal and yet different. Rating 9/10