Milk (2009, Focus Features/Universal)
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For any film fan, there’s no pleasure quite as distinctive as sitting down to watch a new movie from a director you know you can not only trust, but whose work boasts its own distinctive visual style. The advent of digital film and the increasingly corporate culture of the major studios have helped weed a lot of the more idiosyncratic directors out of the system, but there are always at least a few of them on the landscape, and 2008 saw new releases from three of them: Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight), Gus Van Sant (Milk), and Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire). As luck would have it, all three of them were sizable hits, and all of them earned some measure of attention from the Academy during Oscar season. TDK has been out on DVD and Blu-ray for some time now, and by the end of March, both Milk and Slumdog will have joined it on the home market.

Milk, the Sean Penn-led biopic of trailblazing San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, reached store shelves on the 10th, just in time for the last bit of Oscar buzz to give the Best Picture contender a boost on the sales and rental charts. Penn, of course, earned an Academy Award for his portrayal of Milk, and for good reason — as is his wont, Penn doesn’t play the character so much as he inhabits him, disappearing inside Milk’s distinctive mannerisms and New York accent — even his hairstyle — until you no longer really see him. Penn’s near-exclusive focus on serious roles is easy to mock, and I certainly wouldn’t complain if he pulled another Spicoli out of his bag before he’s through, but there’s no denying he does excellent work. For an actor this well-known to vanish inside a public figure as iconic as Milk requires truly impressive actorly prestidigitation.

Penn got most of the attention, but Milk’s biggest asset is probably Van Sant’s eye; his restless camera meshes well with the archival footage used in the film, and the saturated, bleached-out look he uses helps the movie retain an uncommon degree of warmth for what is, ultimately, a garden-variety biopic with a stellar pedigree. Harvey Milk is an American hero, and Van Sant does an admirably nimble job of retracing his steps from cautiously closeted New York professional to political firebrand, but he never really gets inside Milk the way Penn does; no matter how beautifully filmed and performed they are, the details of Milk’s life still feel like points on a curve. Van Sant’s camera entranced me, and his stellar cast (which also includes Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsch, and James Franco, all of whom turn in wonderful performances) impressed me, but Milk rarely moved me; for a truly heavyweight look back at the man, I’d still recommend Rob Epstein’s The Times of Harvey Milk. (more…)