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Updated Friday, February 20, 2009 9:30 am TWN, By Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

Along with Harvey's successes, "Milk" frankly depicts his flaws, including what would prove to be his fatal misreading of the hapless White. (Courtesy of Focus Features)

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Milk 自由大道

As "Milk" vibrantly conveys, no one had more fun than Harvey himself, whether in the rhetorical jujitsu of his stock speech opener ("I am Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you") or, as the Toscanini of the photo-op, introducing a "pooper scooper" law that proves hugely popular. With impish glee, Penn imbues Harvey with that odd mix of idealism, compulsion and ambition that drives so many politicians. But, more crucially, he captures the joy. As Harvey goes toe-to-toe with his opponents, who range from San Francisco's gay establishment to a homophobic state legislator, he's not just a gay warrior but also a genuinely happy one.

Happy but, gratifyingly, not perfect. Along with Harvey's successes, "Milk" frankly depicts his flaws, including what would prove to be his fatal misreading of the hapless White. A sucker for strays, Harvey breaks up with Scott and eventually falls for a man named Jack Lira (Diego Luna), whose instability was at nearly constant odds with Harvey's own growing confidence and influence.

Throughout a career that has spanned such edgy independent films as "My Own Private Idaho" and mainstream fare like "Good Will Hunting," Van Sant has proved to be a director of rare fluency and intelligence. Here, both sensibilities serve him well as he unpacks the myriad forces that influenced Harvey's rise and fall. Van Sant packs an enormous amount of information into "Milk," meticulously weaving gay history, California politics, the nascent Christian conservative movement and the events of Harvey's personal life into one densely layered whole.

Van Sant uses just about every cinematic technique at his disposal -- newsreel footage, split screens, a variety of film stocks -- to keep "Milk" not just visually exciting, but also expressive. At one crucial juncture, for example, when Harvey needs to enlist a group of activists quickly, Van Sant uses multiplying frames of men answering the phone to illustrate swiftly and with graphic simplicity both the mechanics and exhilarating power of grass-roots organizing.

And, finally, that might be the most difficult and important thing that "Milk" gets right: celebrating the bravery, brio and burrowing, antlike banality of political work. What makes "Milk" extraordinary isn't just that it's a nuanced, stirring portrait of one of the 20th century's most pivotal figures, but also that it's also a nuanced, stirring portrait of the thousands of people he energized.

Harvey Milk was no doubt a great man, but Van Sant gratifyingly avoids making him a Great Man. Instead, he shifts his focus throughout "Milk" from Harvey himself to the movement he so ingeniously led. What's more, that push-pull approach flawlessly suits the idea Van Sant expresses most subtly: That history isn't a straight line, but an often heartbreaking two-steps-back gavotte. The point, as Harvey Milk taught so many so well, is to stay in the dance.

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