Milk concerns Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California who was assassinated in 1978. An acclaimed documentary about him, The Times of Harvey Milk, was released in 1984; and this  feature film biopic has reportedly been in development for years. However, releasing the finished movie now, in December of 2008, couldn't be more timely. It comes on the heels of Brokeback Mountain, the most successful mainstream movie about homosexuality up to this point, and an Academy Award Best Picture nominee that lost (surprisingly) to Crash. Building acceptance, it seems, remains a slow process, but the recent election of Barack Obama serves as an example of an achievable milestone of a steady civil rights movement. Still, just as African-Americans are celebrating a triumph in that regard, the gay community was handed yet another setback in California with Proposition 8, which proposed to re-institute the ban on gay marriage. It barely passed, at roughly a 52% yes vote.

The time is right for Milk. The man was not only elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he politically united the growing gay community of The Castro District and electrified them as a force. As told by director Gus Van Sant (who has found just the right combination of his artistic intent and commercial skills here) and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, Milk's story comes across as extremely empathetic -- framed by a device featuring Milk, near the end of his life, narrating his story into an audio tape recorder. The movie starts when Milk (Sean Penn) and his new boyfriend Scott Smith (James Franco) move to San Francisco and try to open a camera shop. Immediately, they encounter prejudice, and while Smith might be fine with brushing it off, Milk is not. He willfully embarks on a quest to change things by running for various offices over the next few years.

We're on Milk's side not only because of the bald-faced hatred he's up against, but also because of Sean Penn's astounding performance. I'm not a big Penn fan, but I acknowledge his acting skills. However, in his performances I've seen, including his Oscar-winning turn in Mystic River, there's always something I sensed as self-conscious, a kind of arrogance resulting from acting with a capital "A."  But in Milk, Penn disappears. His performance is utterly joyful and, at the right times, sad -- plus also angry and righteous. At all times, it never loses its potential for empathy.

Because so much of Milk rides on the personality of its protagonist, it breezes by with sincere heart, optimism, and a bit of defiance. Throughout the film, Milk does acknowledge that his life may be at risk due to the openness of his homosexual status, and he seems convinced he will die at a relatively young age. But time and again, he stands up and stands out, and nothing happens to him. His assassination at the hands of Dan White (Josh Brolin), a fellow member of the Board of Supervisors, gets played out as much more personally motivated than based on politics or prejudice (though there are hints about White being a closeted self-loather who, perhaps, couldn't reconcile his perspectives with Milk's; White also killed Mayor George Moscone, played by Victor Garber, on the same day). Therefore, Milk's death would be more galvanizing than silencing for his movement.

While watching the movie, Milk's triumphs become our triumphs, his defeats our defeats, his struggles our struggles, and his fights our fights. Perhaps the film  arranges things to be too strongly on his side, especially for a real-life story, but honestly I can't see the other side. That other side is bigotry, as represented mainly by Denis O'Hare as Senator John Briggs and archive footage of Anita Bryant. In the 21st century, this kind of prejudice loses more and more grounding, but when California, one of the most liberal states in the U.S., can still pass a Proposition 8, the time is right to tell Milk's story in such a compelling way -- and with a star performance as well as a big vote for empathy.

(Released by Focus Features and rated "R" for language, some sexual content and brief violence.)

Review also posted at www.windowtothemovies .