“…how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable…”
So: Sean Penn won the Oscar – and although I haven’t seen “Milk”, I have admired him unreservedly in everything that I have seen him in. And then he goes and makes a speech like this – and one realises what qualities we should all look for in a man in the public eye.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dnM8v9aaR0
The Oscars, for all the opportunities that the speechmakers have are still typified by selfishness, sentiment and declared (but often phoney-sounding) pronouncements of personal faith. Penn, by contrast, is noble, gracious and generous – and not one note rings false – and I think it’s because he praises van Sant in terms utterly suited to a director, Rourke as a fellow actor, and he’s self-deprecating without being self-effacing at one and the same time. And when he chooses to make his political point, he makes it (after reading Richard T Kelly’s excellent biography of him, in what seems typical of the man) as a personal point: “the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes” is an extraordinary image – and all the better for that.
