Kinsey Review
by Bob Bloom (bob AT bloomink DOT com)December 22nd, 2004
KINSEY (2004) 3 1/2 stars out of 4. Starring Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris O'Donnell, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt and Dylan Baker. Music by Carter Burwell. Written and directed by Bill Condon. Rated R.
Running time: Approx. 120 mins.
Come on, let’s talk about sex — for a good two hours.
That’s the scenario of Kinsey, the bio-pic about Dr. Alfred Kinsey who made a study of not only the birds and the bees, but of mom, dad, sister, brother and anyone else with sexual organs.
Kinsey brought sex out of the bedroom and the closet and objectively plunked it down in the living room without even a beg your pardon, shocking most of middle-class America with his findings and observations.
Writer-director Bill Condon’s movie traces the career of Kinsey the same way the researcher conducted his studies — with total frankness and a non-judgmental attitude.
Kinsey’s early life was a far cry from the pioneer he ultimately became. The son of a stern, strict Methodist minister who drilled his son on the evils of sex, young Alfred showed an early inclination toward rebellion by leaving home against his father’s wishes to attend Bowdoin College to study biology and psychology.
In 1920 he joined the staff at Indiana University, teaching biology and, over the next 20 years, became the foremost expert on the gall wasp, a non-stinging insect, amassing the world’s largest collection of that species.
At Indiana he met and married Clara McMillen, like himself a free spirit, who shared his interest in insect evolution.
It was the difficulties during their honeymoon that sparked Kinsey’s interests in sex education and his crusade to study and categorize human sexual behavior.
For a movie about sex, Kinsey is pictorially rather tame. It is, though, the most sexually explicit movie you’ll ever hear, so I strongly advise most prudes and those narrow-minded individuals easily offended by listening to discussions about sexual activity to stay home.
Condon takes two tracks in tracing Kinsey’s life — the professional and the personal. For while studying human sexuality, the scientist also had to come to grips with his own confusion about sex. Kinsey also had to battle a uptight society’s shock and disgust with his research, beg for funding to continue his controversial studies as well as seek the respect he claimed he deserved for his groundbreaking work.
Liam Neeson as Kinsey is magnificent; his best performance since Schindler’s List.
He is the complete scientist — detached, singularly-focused and emotionally awkward.
He is ever the objective observer, even with those closest and dearest to him.
Neeson should receive a best actor Oscar nomination for this complex portrayal.
Laura Linney as Clara is his intellectual match. Linney is no beauty in the classic sense, but she instills in Clara an honesty and forthright manner as well as a sensuality and humor that makes her the scientist’s perfect soul mate.
Linney, too, deserves recognition when Oscar nominations are announced. Among the supporting cast, Peter Sarsgaard stands out as Kinsey’s main assistant.
His complex professional and personal relationship with both Kinseys creates some of the movie’s most intellectual and emotional tensions and conflicts.
As Kinsey’s morally strict father, John Lithgow brings a sense of pity and tragedy to a role that transcends stereotype.
Condon deserves much credit for neither sensationalizing nor debasing the heart of the story — Kinsey’s research. When Kinsey visits a gay bar or interviews an admitted pedophile, Condon’s camera remains an impartial observer, neither judging nor commenting.
Despite its explicitness, Kinsey is a throwback to the type of biographies such as The Story of Louis Pasteur, Madame Curie or Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet that the major studios produced during the 1930s and ’40s.
The impact and power of Kinsey is built upon a foundation of respect and appreciation for the subject and his work. Like Kinsey, Condon has checked his moral agenda at the door and built his movie on a solid foundation of evenhandedness.
Kinsey is one of the best movies of the year. It shows how far we have come, while the furor surrounding the movie also demonstrates how much more we need to travel.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or at [email protected].
Bloom's reviews also can be found at the Journal and Courier Web site: www.jconline.com
Other reviews by Bloom can be found at the Rottentomatoes Web site: www.rottentomatoes.com or at the Internet Movie Database Web site:
www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom
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