Gus Van Sant’s powerful and provocative film signifies a profound shift within American politics. Following on the heels of Oliver Stone’s grotesque World Trade Center (2006) and his 2008 Bush biopic W. (2008), this film - depicting the first openly gay man to be voted to public office in America - echoes another momentous first, the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Whilst Milk is one of Van Sant’s most populist and accessible films since Good Will Hunting (1997), it is also one of his most intelligent and engaging works to date. The film unpicks the complex dynamic in the American political system that lead both to the rise and the inevitable fall of this charismatic agent of change.

Van Sant has produced a broad and challenged body of work throughout his career as a film director, creating provocative independent films such as Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991), but also popular mainstream works such as Good Will Hunting and Gerry (2002). The artistic focus of his last three films has been upon the exploration of a much more experimental style: including problematic and splintered narratives; sustained tracking shots; and an interest in an art-house cinematography that disrupts and undermines the conventions of mainstream cinema. However, perhaps most significantly, these films (including Elephant (2003), that is a dramatisation of the Columbine High School shootings; and Last Days (2005), which depicts the last moments of Kurt Cobain before his suicide) are expressions of an obsession, not only with death; but rather, with the tragic inevitability of the self destructive drive of modern society.

Milk is the first film within Van Sant’s career that successfully combines this disparate collection of idiomatic thumb prints. Whilst one of his most accessible and populist films, this work is also intelligent and complex and utilises an experimental and expressive cinematography. The film uses a versatile and comprehensive variety of shooting techniques (by the cinematographer Harris Savides) including newsreel footage and a variety of film stocks; and once again, recalling Van Sant’s earlier films, the work is laden with the complexity of social dynamics within modern society through its depiction of a tragic inevitability.           

The film, set in 1977, depicts the process through which Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) became an elected member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. However, despite being the first openly gay man elected to a position of political power in America, the story is not simply about a triumph for gay rights; but rather, it is a portrayal of a committed activist and fighter for human rights, who also fought for the rights of union workers and senior citizens and changed the face of American politics.

The film focuses on the last eight years of Milk’s life, beginning with his mid-life crisis on his fortieth birthday – an event that motivates him to find more meaning in his life and drives him to move to the Castro neighbourhood in San Francisco, originally to start a business. However, he is surprised when he inadvertently becomes a radical subject of social change. The deeply moving and tragic end to the film is the assassination of Harvey Milk and the San Francisco Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) by Harvey’s co-supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin).

However, despite the film’s mainstream appeal, and recalling the inconclusive and unsettling engagement with the subject matter within Elephant, Last Days and Paranoid Park (2007), the film resists any reductionist reading of this story. Van Sant, with great subtlety, manages to reflect upon the innumerable social and political forces that lead both to Milk’s rise and fall: he includes an immense quantity of information within the film, exploring the dynamics of Californian politics, the history of gay men within American society, and the political influence of the Christian conservative movement. However, he resists the drive, which is prevalent not only within the media but also within modern society, to give an absolute or definitive answer to social tragedies. But rather, he captures the theatre of American politics, the charisma and playfulness of Harvey Milk, whilst also reflecting an acceptance of the turbulent dialectic of history.