Director Gus Van Sant and first-time screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black, have brought together a brilliant reduction of big issues and mass movements into telling human moments, in their latest offering ‘Milk’. 

An extremely good biopic of Harvey Milk, the slain San Francisco supervisor and gay activist, story is a conventional screen biography, depicting the rise of a gay identity. It is essentially the story of underdogs who demand equal treatment. 

The real news footage from 1978, when Milk was murdered by political rival Dan White, is the opening scene of the film. Then it flashes back to 1970 New York, where Harvey (Sean Penn) meets the handsome Scott Smith (James Franco) on a subway staircase and lures him to his bed, saying that it is his 40th birthday and he deserves a present. 

Thereon, charting the last eight years of Harvey Milk’s life, the film follows Milk - his closeted days as a Wall Street Republican; his relocation to San Francisco with Scott; his hippie reincarnation in what would become Fog City’s Castro District, three unsuccessful candidacies; and finally his year as the nation’s first openly gay person elected an official on the city’s Board of Supervisors. 

Sean Penn as Harvey Milk has given perhaps the warmest performance of his life, utterly disappearing into character. However, there’s another great performance – that of Josh Brolin as Dan White, who assassinated Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. Brolin brings a sad, troubled humanity to the character of a person ill-equipped to understand the maneuvering and the changes going on around him. 

The entire package makes ‘Milk’ an amusing, moving and emotionally intense film that surely is among the best of 2008.