Gus Van Sant tops his long, interesting career as a producer, writer, and director in the movie industry with his latest film MILK starring Sean Penn as the political activist for gay rights in 1970s San Francisco.  The actor creates all the passion and foibles of the character in a tour de force performance that is sure to win him a nomination for a Best Actor award this year especially because Harvey Milk was a sympathetic and revolutionary figure.  But it is perhaps for Gus van Sant, his turn to take the top kudos for Best Director because the pervasive message of his work is an overwhelming sense of a love of humanity.

  Most will remember the director for his Good Will Hunting, or maybe for Elephant, the pitiless look at alienated teens that stage a Columbine-like slaughter at their high school.  The elephant refers to the one in the room, the pain of loneliness, experienced by the teens that fall through the cracks. 

  Yes, Van Sant’s movies are raw, they are even grim forcing us to look unflinchingly at the suffering in our culture, suffering that we propagate by our silent participation.  But in spite of the harsh realities of the prejudice against homosexuals and the unconscionable denial of their civil and human rights, MILK emphasizes a genuine sense of hope for all of us by concluding with the last few positive words spoken by Penn as Harvey Milk, a community supervisor who was assassinated in the San Francisco City Hall by a tormented man who lashes out blindly at an easy target. 

  Milk wholeheartedly believed in the possibility of change in an individual’s attitude, and to that end he dedicated his efforts and his life.  “Come out of the closet,” he begged his gay compatriots.  It was his belief that if people realized that each of us knows someone who is gay, it would be impossible to continue the discrimination perpetrated by the establishment.

  For me the other really moving theme in the film is the idea that we, the people, are powerful.  There’s a big political point made in MILK.  If you don’t like the status quo, change it.  The individual may stand alone but united as a base, we become a force with which to be reckoned.

  It’s a particularly timely message for us because as Americans, we just witnessed a surge of interest in our politics by a grass roots organization that literally swept the nation to wrest back control of the government. MILK does suggest that individuals will act with the milk of human kindness if educated, but the bigger message demands that if there is a good fight to be fought, we must band together and resist injustice.

Click to view Milk trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/milk/