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Gus Van Sant’s biopic Milk is an engaging and uniquely directed look at a fascinating subject. It is an unquestionable success, one of the best films of the year. It is moving, it is affecting and it is powerful. But in the cavalcade of praise that the film deserves, there is one element that shines above all the rest – the performances, top to bottom, are exceptional. From star Sean Penn as Harvey Milk all the way down to the most minor character, everyone melts into their roles so completely that they really seem to have stepped right out of the 70s.

As the film opens, a decidedly clean cut, closeted gay man named Harvey Milk (Penn) solicits a handsome young man in a New York subway station. Scott Smith (James Franco) reluctantly agrees to spend the night with this older gentleman, and when they get to talking they realize that what they both need is a change. A new way of life, a fresh start. So the couple travel out west to San Francisco, and start up a small camera store in the Castro District. Harvey, at this point, is out of the closet and pretty much a hippie. The couple are a lot happier, but something inside Harvey still yearns for something more. What he finds to fill that need is activism. After several years of failed campaigns running for office, Harvey finally gets himself elected to the City Board of Supervisors – becoming the first openly gay man ever elected to any public office in the United States. But his work is not over, far from it; not content to be a token homosexual in the political arena, Harvey takes up causes ranging from local to national. His intense devotion to his political work alienates his longtime lover Scott, but also provides him the opportunity to meet and mentor other young activists like Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch). Harvey wins over the city’s residents - both gay and straight - and makes powerful political allies like Mayor Moscone (Victor Garber) even as his destiny careens toward a confrontation with his potentially unbalanced fellow supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin).

It takes a lot of talent for an actor to portray a real person with more than merely some sort of lazy imitation. There’s also a wealth of talent necessary to portray someone who lived in a time period other than your own. There’s even a special kind of talent necessary to be straight and play a gay man without resorting to an offensive, over the top caricature. But to combine all that, and to do so as fearlessly and seemingly effortlessly as the cast of Milk, is something altogether amazing. Most of the critical praise is being heaped on Penn’s performance, and while he certainly deserves it so too does everyone else onscreen. Franco and Hirsch both turn in the best work of their already illustrious careers, and Josh Brolin continues his recent, rapid ascent to acting supremacy – seriously, look at the past 18 months for this guy; American Gangster, No Country for Old Men, In the Valley of Elah, W. and now Milk - humanizing a monster in ways that aren’t seen so much as they are felt.

Not content to be overshadowed by his powerhouse acting ensemble, director Gus Van Sant delivers by far his best and most enjoyable film to date. Milk is imbued with a documentary feel, filming on location in San Francisco and seamlessly weaving real archival footage into his fictional scenes. The result takes the unabashed realism Van Sant is known for in his recent low budget films Paranoid Park, Last Days, Elephant and Gerry and marries it with a screenplay that is far more accessible and entertaining. But if there is any small fault to be found in the film at all, it is that perhaps the screenplay tries to cram in too much. The passage of time becomes somewhat difficult to nail down, some ideas are short changed and a few characters like Milk’s second lover Jack (Diego Luna) aren’t given enough screen time considering the impact they had on his life. But Big Love producer and staff writer Dustin Lance Black didn’t turn in a bad script, just possibly one with too many good intentions. And with the near perfect acting and fascinating direction, any qualms fade in the face of such outstanding talent on display. The film’s message - and Harvey Milk’s - are all the more timely and important given the recent disappointing Proposition results around the nation from just a few short weeks ago, but even if the moral wasn’t so valuable Gus Van Sant and company have still given the world a piece of work that any true fan of film and the craft of acting owes it to themselves to see.

- Jeff Latta