Not Best Picture: Milk  

Cross posted here....

For funsies, I'm going through each of the Best Picture nominees and talking about why I don't think they should win Best Picture. And being that I'm going from worst to first (except for The Reader, which I just saw today, so will be last to let it marinate a bit), today I get the privilege of trying to break down the movie I actually do believe will win Best Picture, Milk.

Milk's biggest problem was something completely out of its own control: the political environment of 2008. Put out in limited release in late October, by the time Milk found its way to most theaters, the smoke had already cleared from election day and the fallout of Proposition 8 and other referendums around the country regarding gay marriage. Which isn't to say that things might have been different had Milk been released earlier, but what was once seen as a potential victory lap for the gay rights movement now became a stinging reminder of how much work still needed to be done. And with that knowledge came an expectation, that the ghost of Harvey Milk would heal our wounds and inspire us from beyond the grave, this time on the screen. The fact that Milk isn't unbelievably awesome somehow makes you MORE disappointed in it, if only because this was the movement's time in the spotlight. For those of us on the same side of the aisle, it was disappointing that the movie was merely very, very good.

It's hard to know where Milk loses its focus. The movie feels long, even though exposition-wise, there really wasn't that much explanation for a lot of Harvey's crew, or for the central conflict between him and Dan White, the man who would eventually become Harvey's killer. I credit Van Sant for making this film less dreamy and meandering than his last few efforts, but wonder why, given the subject material, he didn't go more with the Good Will Hunting/Finding Forrester vibe. The movie was in desperate need of a bigger heart, and while all the elements are there, they never really come together into anything that you can empathize with. The story is moving because of the subject matter, not necessarily because anyone in the film really grabs a hold of you.

All that being said, Penn really did no wrong in this movie. But here, Penn's performance hogs the air a bit, sometimes obscuring the bigger picture this film should have been pushing. A lot of people say that Harvey Milk was really like that, a man aching to be in the spotlight and narcissistic to a fault. Again, if that was true, the film never gave any indication that we should view Harvey in that way. Instead, the power and veracity of Penn's performance, while jaw-droppingly awesome, sometimes took you out of the story. When combined with the odd portrayal of Diego Luna's character and the lack of focus for Brolin's performance as Dan White, the movie just seemed MORE uneven. And as I've said before, I'm reluctant to praise a movie based on one person's performance.

I wonder what my feelings would be on Milk had the events of this election year never happened. Would I be so full of expectations for a film that is, let's face it, the laziest of all narratives: the biopic? I doubt it, and maybe I would've been able to enjoy the high quality and messages that Milk sought to espouse. But given the political atmosphere, this film needed to be more, and the fact that it fell short only creates a sense of disappointment and lost potential. I'm fairly certain that Milk will win, and I say bravo. It's an important film that deserves accolades and a moment at the podium to call out those who seek to push back the very things it seeks to accomplish. But the movie in a vacuum leaves a lot to be desired.