Sean Penn stars as San Francisco politician and gay-rights icon Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant's biographical drama Milk. (Alliance Films)

In 1977, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States. The final portion of the heartfelt new biopic Milk depicts his great political battle with the singer-turned-moral tyrant Anita Bryant, who waged a campaign against gay teachers that spread across the country. In the film, she tells a reporter, “If homosexuals are allowed their civil rights, then so would thieves and prostitutes and anyone else.” And lemurs? Not lemurs! Noooo!

Director Gus Van Sant has taken a subject that might seem controversial or obvious and made it emotional and relevant.

In other words, the film’s timing is perfect. While the world was giddy with self-congratulation over the election of a black president, U.S. voters defeated gay-positive measures throughout the country, and in California, voted for Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage.

“Yes we can” — ’cept you guys.

Those who, two weeks ago, might have criticized this rather conventional biopic for tap dancing a little too hard for a mainstream audience will probably button their lips right about now. Director Gus Van Sant has made an accessible and tender historical drama, one that explicitly links gay rights to civil rights, and his instincts seem to have been correct: straight (North) America may still require a little handholding on the issue of gay rights.

The movie is held up by slightly cumbersome scaffolding, in that Milk is dictating his memoirs into a tape recorder, an oral document he’s making in the event of assassination. The script, by Dustin Lance Black, spares us the Ray treatment — the bad Freudian, ’splain-it-all biographical backstory — that murders so many real-life dramas. Instead, the film sticks with the final, pivotal chapter of Harvey Milk’s life, beginning on his 40^th birthday.

Milk is played by Sean Penn with a kind of elfin gleefulness, and such palpable warmth isn’t always Penn’s strong suit. His Milk is a sweetheart, a mender of broken-winged people. As a birthday present to himself, Milk picks up a beautiful young man on the New York subway named Scott Smith (James Franco). Milk had been living as a closeted insurance agent; in a spontaneous rush to middle-aged reinvention, he moves with Scott to San Francisco. There, on Castro Street, Milk opens a camera shop that functions more as a drop-in centre, a first-stop hub for all the young gay men who bought bus tickets from their small towns and ended up in the one place they thought they’d be accepted.

Alison Pill, left, and Emile Hirsch portray gay-rights activists Anne Kronenberg and Cleve Jones, respectively, in Milk. (Phil Bray/Alliance Films)

The handlebar moustaches and hip-hugger, crotch-mapping pants make for great period detail, but the film isn’t kitschy — it’s as if Van Sant had to sacrifice a certain playfulness in order to be taken seriously. The sex is quite tame; all the sexual energy that might have been in the bedroom in a different film shows up in the hanging-out scenes. There’s great exuberance in the casual joshing and bickering of people sparking a nascent movement.

Milk is, first and foremost, a businessman, and he wins the support of grumbling Castro Street storeowners by making them prosperous — i.e., by bringing gays to their cash registers. When he realizes he has a gift for working the mainstream, Milk cuts his hair, gets a suit and decides to run for office as San Francisco city supervisor. Despite being defeated twice, Milk is dogged, but Penn portrays his transition subtly. This wasn’t a man who felt like he’d been chosen to lead, but a man who felt compelled to face down discrimination and the police beatings that had become a regular part of San Francisco’s nightlife.

This work for equality takes its toil on his private life, and he loses Smith, the great love who weaves in and out of Milk’s narrative. But how could he focus on just one guy? Milk is driven by a limitless compassion, taking in a mentally damaged lover (Diego Luna) who could become his ruin, and reforming a snotty little street hustler named Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch) into a formidable activist. Hirsch gives the film’s only slightly false performance — it’s too fey, too cute. (Watching him, I did have the thought: could they not have employed one openly gay actor in a major part? Of course, if no gay actors want to be associated, then the project begins to feel even more urgent.)

In office at last, Milk becomes a fixation for fellow supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin, in yet another strong performance), who’s both fascinated and appalled by the flamboyant, occasionally racy Milk. In one bleakly funny scene, White whines that it’s not fair that Milk has “an issue” that resonates with the public. Brolin is unnervingly unfastened, muttering muddled logic about “protecting the family.” Milk, naturally, wants to rehabilitate these damaged goods, and his kindness only flummoxes White more. (To those who know the history, read on; if you prefer to be surprised, skip the next paragraph.)

Josh Brolin plays San Francisco city supervisor Dan White in Milk. (Alliance Films)

In 1978, Dan White assassinated Harvey Milk, along with Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber). For his crimes, White served five years in prison.

It would be easy to chalk up such atrocities to history — except for what happened with Prop 8, or what happened in Oshawa, Ont., last week, when two lesbian mothers were beaten up on their kids’ school playground. Milk celebrates the achievement of its hero and his community, but there’s no happy ending — it’s not a done deal.

There are only a couple of ounces of preachiness in Milk. The tragedy is buoyant, and the film works purely as entertainment. With his rubbery posture and giggling accent, Penn perfects the contours of this character, a man who makes flesh the concept of optimism, the — dare we say? — Obamaian urge for change.

Van Sant has been turning out fairly experimental films in the past couple of years (Paranoid Park, Elephant), but this return to the — ahem — straighter storytelling he showed in his biggest hit, Good Will Hunting (1998), proves he possesses a rare kind of artistic flexibility. He has taken a subject that might seem controversial or obvious and made it emotional and relevant. (He’s a chronicler with an eye for beauty, too — a sucker for the loveliness of young men.) Milk is really a simple film, and a very American one, about a man with a sense of justice, trying to change the world.

Milk opens in Toronto on Nov. 26 and the rest of the country starting Dec. 5.

Katrina Onstad is the film columnist for CBCNews.ca.