We learn early on that Harvey Milk (Penn), gay rights activist elected in the 1970s to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, has been shot and killed, along with Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber), by disgruntled politician Dan White. The power of the film lies in the moving way it traces Milk’s heroic life and campaign in behalf of gay rights to the point of his tragic death at the age of 48.

What the film clarifies repeatedly in intensely dramatic terms is that the issue has been more than one of equal legal rights. Milk was also dedicated to enabling gays to proudly assert who they really are as human beings and live openly with self-esteem. Van Sant, working from the screenplay by Dustin Lance Black, places Milk’s life in the broad scope of what was generally going on in the battle for gay rights, not only in San Francisco, but in the country as a whole. There is excitement and passion in the way the film depicts taking on such enemies as anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant and the depiction of Milk’s political savvy as well as his commitment.

A large cast adds to the authenticity, but it is Penn who gives the film its prime drive and humanity. His acting as a gay man is convincing and avoids any hint of cliché. One accepts him as Harvey Milk, and by the time the film is over, he is the Milk that will be etched in my mind even though in the end credits there is a photo of the real Harvey Milk. (I still think of General Patton as George C. Scott as a result of Scott’s dynamic screen portrayal, and I expect I now will always think of Milk as Sean Penn.)

Josh Brolin is effective as the angry, anti-gay Dan White, and he succeeds in giving us a picture of White as deeply troubled, leading up to his lethal attack and not making it surprising that he ultimately committed suicide after finishing serving his prison term, a fact cited on screen after the film is over.

The film’s supporting cast portrays various actual persons around Milk in his life and political campaigning during the 1970s, and the result thrusts us into the milieu with a feeling of reality. Milk’s depicted assassination can break one’s heart. Indeed, the film is framed by Milk dictating memoirs into a tape recorder with expectation that his life would be in danger. Ironically, the death turned out to be not from someone filled with hate firing at a rally, but from someone he knew and had served with on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.