After making four films that revealed the capital-A artist within, Gus Van Sant returns to a more mainstream project, an account of the life and death of gay activist-turned-politician Harvey Milk, played here by Sean Penn. Yet while the biopic is one of the most formulaic and Oscar-grubbing of genres, Milk looks like a Van Sant movie through and through. For one thing, the film appears to rival Brokeback Mountain as the most sexually frank movie about homosexuals to be released by a Hollywood distributor to date, in keeping with both the material and with Van Sant’s own work. In addition, Van Sant’s style is very much in evidence- plentiful follow shots and off-kilter framing- particularly in the bits involving Dan White (Josh Brolin, who between this and W. is remaking his career playing men the American Left loves to hate). Unlike many films in this genre, whose stories remain inoffensively in the past, Milk has relevance even today, when gay rights is a point of contention for many Americans. In short, this is one of the best trailers I’ve seen so far this year, and the movie itself has rocketed near the top of my must-see films for fall.
