Kinsey Review
by Jonathan F. Richards (moviecritic AT opus40 DOT org)November 30th, 2004
IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
KINSEY
Written and directed by Bill Condon
Rated R, 118 minutes
BIRDS DO IT, BEES DO IT
"The only unnatural sexual act is that which you cannot perform." Alfred Kinsey
Sex, it turns out, embraces many forms and many permutations, chooses a mind-boggling variety of positions and techniques, employs artifacts and body parts not commonly thought of in erotic terms, enjoys couplings, triplings, and beyond, that take in all imaginable gender and species combinations, and generally encompasses more ways to heaven on earth
than are dreamt of in your philosophy. This may or
may not come as news to you; but the chances of your being at least passing conversant with the principles involved are a lot better today than they might have been in the first half of the 20th century.
Much of the thanks for our heightened awareness of the realities and possibilities of sex is due to Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, whose reports on Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) rocked the world and made him one of its most famous inhabitants. In the new movie by writer-director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters), Kinsey's life, work, and legacy are explored in ways that are sometimes fascinating, sometimes shocking, and occasionally a little silly.
Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson) was the son of a minister (John Lithgow) for whom sex was a necessary evil and the zipper was the devil's tool. Kinsey began his scientific career as a biologist at Indiana University studying the gall wasp, and collected over a million of the little devils ("as different as snowflakes!") before shifting his attention to human sexual behavior, and after all those gall wasps it's not hard to sympathize with his need for a change. His fascination with the subject seems to have begun with his marriage. The movie shows Kinsey and his wife Mac (Laura Linney) to be virgins on their wedding night, and consummation is a disaster. The nature of the problem becomes evident in a visit to a sex counselor, who inquires as to the size of Professor Kinsey's male equipment. The answer, as provided wordlessly by Mac, is both amusing and impressive.
As he warms to the topic, Professor Kinsey – or Prok, as he is known to friends – is appalled by the lack of information and the profusion of misinformation prevailing about sex. He begins teaching a "marriage" course at Indiana, and even enjoys a little puckish humor. "What organ in the human body can expand its size 100 times?" he asks a coed, and when she indignantly refuses to answer, he explains that it's the iris of the eye, adding wryly "I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed."
The first part of the movie is told primarily in flashbacks, and we see Kinsey and his research assistants (Peter Sarsgaard, Chris O'Donnell, and Timothy Hutton) developing their interview techniques by interviewing each other about their own sexual practices and memories. Later we learn that they and their wives were encouraged to live close together – perhaps too close together – and that the Kinsey devotion to accumulating sexual experience extended to first hand acting-out as well as empirical research.
This brings the focus to one of the movie's central themes: the conflict between the quantifiable data of sexual practice, and the non-quantifiable ephemera of the attendant romantic and personal complications. There are vulnerable places in the human heart, and black abysses in the human soul, where no measuring device can reach and no statistics can be taken.
Liam Neeson stands astride this film like a colossus, six feet four inches of rawboned, bull-in-a-china-shop energy and unquenchable curiosity. The effect of his powerful performance is undercut a little by the time span it is asked to cover – the 52-year-old Neeson tests our suspension of disbelief as a youthful professor, and as he ages without ever changing his hairstyle or his bowtie, we seldom have any idea what decade we're in. The Kinsey he gives us is both saint and sinner, but above all he is a seeker of truth. Laura Linney is captivating and full of surprises as the redoubtable Mrs. Kinsey, and Peter Sarsgaard breaks out of the otherwise wasted cast of research assistants. There are two arresting scenes near the end of the movie. One belongs to Lynne Redgrave as a woman saved by Kinsey's research when she realizes she is not alone in her sexual choice. The other is a remarkable description by William Sadler of a sexual lifestyle so predatory that even Kinsey sees it as perverted.
Kinsey's project has depended on support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the university, and their backing begins to fall away under the onslaught of outraged Puritanism that follows upon his release of the '53 study on female sexuality. We do not tolerate that kind of talk about American womenfolk, and congressional hearings and whispered accusations of Communism hound him from the field.
The real importance of Kinsey is in its reminder of the dangers we court when we insist on sexual ignorance in the name of moral values, and of the ways in which we today have moved on and not moved on from the sexual attitudes of the generations that preceded Kinsey's landmark studies. In a time when there are powerful political agendas pushing us toward a rollback in straightforward sex education, this may well be a timely reminder.
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