It Does the Mind Good

It's "prestige movie" season, that time of year when studios roll out their films most likely to garner Oscar consideration. But sometimes these movies really are worthy of the "for your consideration" treatment, and today I saw one such movie -- Milk.

This is a biopic of the first openly gay man to be elected to public office, covering a six-year span of his life from his repeated attempts to get elected, to his campaign against an anti-gay ballot initiative in California, to his assassination. (If it happens you didn't know that was how his life came to an end, you can't really blame me for spoiling anything. The movie reveals this within the first couple minutes.)

The acting is top notch across the board. Sean Penn is funny and charismatic as the title character, and you easily identify with him. James Franco is wonderful in a role that could easily be unsympathetic, a lover who doesn't stick with Milk when the games of politics gets to be too much. And Josh Brolin makes a full-fledged character of a role that was certainly not designed to be sympathetic, that of a rival city supervisor. Everyone in the movie comes across very genuine.

The work of the set designers and costumers on this film is also excellent. You'd hardly take any notice of it, and that's part of what makes it so great. The 70s are presented with complete credibility. What's more, when the film closes with a montage of the actors' performances transitioning into actual footage of the real life people, nearly all of them are dead ringers for the people they're portraying.

The script is also very strong, though I do think it has just a couple flaws that are ultimately the only weakness of the entire movie. It's as though the writer wasn't quite willing to trust that the real events were quite enough to elicit the right emotional responses. The true story itself is full of moments of joy and tragedy, and the film presents all of them very well; each lands with real emotional power.

But sprinkled in the mix in just a few places are one or two moments that are manufactured. Biographical movies almost always take liberties with the truth, and they're often forgivable because of how they serve the whole. But somehow it felt like more of an intrusion here. The writing and performance of the completely true moments was strong enough that the undoubtedly fictional moments designed to "raise the stakes" simply didn't seem necessary.

If you don't want to be spoiled at all about the movie, skip on to the next paragraph here.... but I'm thinking most significantly of the phone call at the end of the movie between Harvey and his former lover Scott. The notion that the two might be on the verge of a reconciliation simply didn't seem like it could be true to real life. It seemed like a manufactured bit to add weight to the coming tragedy, yet it hardly seemed necessary with the more legitimate momentum the film had already built.

But overall, this is a fairly minor quibble with what was an excellent movie. I rate it an A-. You should all get out to see it.