Milk by Gus Van Sant

Milk is the new feature film of acclaimed american director, Gus Van Sant. It tells the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected to the public office in the state of California, concretely to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Sean Penn portrays Milk as one of the best performances of his career (he has been nominated to the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards). Also starring are Josh Brolin as Dan White, Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones, James Franco as Scott Smith and Diego Luna as Jack Lira.

Van Sant is a great director visually and this movie proves it once again. The storytelling is creative and innovative by mixing it with real footage from the 70's, unconventional camera shots or simply by not telling the story in a lineal boring way. Also Penn's performance gives a very emotional picture of the gay struggle in the 70's against the conservative right wing. Even if you are not a gay yourself, you can identify with what that group of men and women made in favor of the concept of tolerance. Franco's performance was good after his hilarious portrait of a pothead in "Pineapple Express", Brolin, as a great actor himself, makes the perfect anti-thesis of Milk, youngster Hirsch (previously directed by Penn in 07's classic "Into the Wild") makes the job as the young gay activist and Luna's performance was not that good because he was type-casted as the token latino guy who dies, not having that much speaking time. Anyhow, the movie is great and my highlights are Penn's performance who was marvelous, Van Sant never goes wrong directing because he is one of the great american storytellers and the theme is well-developed in a entertaining, visually atractive and moving way. 9 out of 10 stars.