Astonishing performance by Sean Penn in this biopic about California’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk. I’m sure he’ll get an Oscar nomination for his role, but I don’t think he’ll win the award. We haven’t seen Brad Pitt in ‘The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button’ yet. The last person who won an Oscar for a gay role was Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2006, for his marvelous Capote role. But let’s not forget that he stole the award from Heath Ledger, who portrayed another gay character in the already legendary Brokeback Mountain.
Enough about awards talk. The movie, directed by Gus Van Sant (he’s openly gay), is beautifully crafted, and tells us about the last 8 years or so of Milk’s life. If at the age of 40 he thought that he didn’t do anything with his life, at 48 I’m sure he was proud of what he accomplished. Other notable roles include Emile Hirsch’s weird character Cleve Jones, Diego Luna as the gay Jack Lira, James Franco and of course, Josh Brolin, again in a hate worthy role. The atmosphere of the early and late 70’s is genuine, the last scene is just simply incredible and sad… A great movie by Van Sant. He outdid himself. He may be up for an Oscar again, 11 years after Good Will Hunting.
9/10
Superunknown MadAnd 