Kinsey Movie Review:


“Kinsey” reminds us that, as a nation, we in the U.S. are ashamed of sex. Even though set primarily in the 1940s, the movie is approached in a way that highlights how uncomfortable sexual freedom can feel to current audiences. We're invited to chuckle at unfounded and outdated fears about sex, yet we're confronted with scenarios that still feel generally unconventional today. The film points out how far we've come and, at the same time, how we haven't come as far as we think.

That this movie could be made in the first place provides considerable evidence for how much we've progressed. Its frank approach to the subject matter directly reflects that of its real-life subject: Professor Alfred C. Kinsey. Kinsey's work in the study of human sexual behavior and practices was groundbreaking because of the scientific, as opposed to superstitious, process he used. In the film, Kinsey (Liam Neeson) is shown strictly handling the study with a staunch, factual coldness. He demands his assistants follow suit. The movie then goes on to show various sexual activities with much detachment. Viewed in our time when the facts of sex have been so thoroughly explored, none of what happens here can really shock us, and the movie knows it.

Nevertheless, although the idea of emotionally detached sex is no longer a new concept, its depiction here demonstrates how it can still feel foreign. Kinsey and his associates spend much of the movie engaging in several forms of sexual exploration, yet toward the end of the movie, the tendency to attach meaning to these actions becomes unpreventable. The characters' discomfort leading to this conclusion acts as a release for the audience as well. Before the movie is over, statements about the elusive nature of "love," in contrast to sex, are unavoidably made.

“Kinsey” doesn't transition into this ending well. What it posits about love goes against what the movie has spent so much time in demonstrating, i.e., the scientific belief system of Kinsey and the good that came from his work. It gives a corny wrap-up to an otherwise intriguing look at the human inclination of establishing and breaking, in all manners of imaginative ways, rules about sex in society. For most of the movie, we're not sure what love's got to do with it. The final statement then comes as a surprising, out-of-place bow to traditional thinking, almost as a concession to an audience's need for a tidy moral.

But then, even for all its blank-faced portrayals of sexual experimentation and the pioneering of its acceptance, “Kinsey” stays wrapped in a traditional skin. As a biopic of the professor, it's disappointingly of-the-mold with its rise-fall-and-redemption character arc, very strong lead performances (from Neeson and leading lady Laura Linney), some utilization of flashbacks, and lead male character suffering in the third act as wife stands strongly by.

However, “Kinsey” deserves more attention for two other reasons. First, it's an excellent reminder of how human sexuality cannot be fully controlled. Kinsey's work showed us that while everyone believed the nation was pure on the surface, the real story was shaded in many additional and unexpected colors. The more human sexuality -- a driving force naturally at odds with society's attempts to contain it --is denied, the more dangerous it becomes.

Second, the film emerges as a thoughtful depiction of Kinsey's work. As an exposure-builder for Kinsey and his objective methods, it's daring and noble. But as a movie, those effective squirm-inducing moments, which smartly and confidently challenge an audience, are at odds with a structure working to put that same audience at ease. It's a liberal movie with a conservative presentation; no doubt the film's middle ground will most easily win praise from a general audience, but one wonders if it was the best way to make a movie about such an outside-the-box thinker as Professor Kinsey.



Jeffrey Chen

Some have classified him as a demon. Hell bent on publicizing the underbelly of our society and destroying our youth.

Others remember him as a remarkable scientist who did some ground-breaking work in the study of Gall Wasps. Oh, and that sex study he did.

The new film “Kinsey” stars Liam Neeson as the eclectic scientist Alfred Kinsey who is taking a lot of pride in his most recent research into the mating cycle of the Gall Wasp, while continuing his tenure as a biology professor at Indiana University. Kinsey develops a personal relationship with one of his students, Clara McMillen (Laura Linney). Clara’s interest in Kinsey comes when she becomes more curious about the rather reclusive professor and his surmounting work.

As a biology professor, Kinsey begins to see a vast array of data on sexuality especially after he gets visits from students who are confused and often sexually repressed. He begins to realize that there isn’t any reliable research to help people explore and talk about sex in a healthy environment.

Kinsey decides that something has to be done and embarks on a journey to uncover the sexuality of human beings from a purely scientific perspective. Kinsey develops an interviewing technique that allows a researcher to chronicle the sexual identity of a subject. But to gather the amount of data needed for the study, Kinsey hires a team of researchers, who included Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), Wardell Pomeroy (Chris O’Donnell) and Paul Gebhard (Timothy Hutton), to help him.

Kinsey’s exploration into the world of sexuality predates the sexual revolution of the 1960s and becomes the center of controversy during the 1950s. Throughout his life, Kinsey never was sure his life’s work made a difference. Even science can’t completely uncover where sex ends and love begins.

“Kinsey” is a remarkable film because it asks questions and poses new ideas. What is really amazing about the film is that a lot of our ideas on sex haven’t really changed since Kinsey did his study. There are still a lot of closed doors and lack of understanding when it comes to one of life’s most basic acts.

Liam Neeson’s performance as Kinsey as the structured scientist is utterly brilliant. You can literally see all the closed off emotion and repression going on inside the man as he tackles this controversial subject without judgment. His performance is profound and fractured but also emotionless. He nailed the part and it surely is one of the best performances this year.

Laura Linney’s loving yet slightly tormented wife is also a great supporting performance to Neeson’s Kinsey. Like Neeson, she is able to display so much through just one glare. I also really liked the dynamic she had against Sarsgaard for Kinsey’s attention and love.

The film itself tries to portray Kinsey as a scientist tackling a very difficult subject. Like all scientists, Kinsey becomes obsessed and involved in his work.

Screenwriter and director Bill Condon’s vision of the man is that everything in his life is to be treated as scientific structure. That structure and focused understanding faces off against the raw emotion and complex feelings of human beings in the most private of acts. That is a most complicated feat.

I liked that Condon didn’t shy away from some Kinsey’s more controversial analyzes. I also liked that we saw a lot of different sides of the man but the film manages to stay the path of science even through some of the harder scenes.

Another gem of acting in the film is the casting of John Lithgow as the “straight-arrow” but disgruntled father of Kinsey. Lithgow is amazing in this performance which in some ways reminded me a lot of his performance in the film “Footloose” except taken to the next level. The very last scene that has Neeson and Lithgow together is so intimate and heartbreaking that it goes down as one of the greatest scenes I have seen this year. There is just so much in that scene.

For me, “Kinsey” is one of the best films of the year just because it allows the audience to think, understand and then allow the audience to make its own conclusion. But you obviously you have to see the film first. So what are you waiting for?



So Says the Soothsayer.

Dean Kish

Gods and Monsters writer-director Condon returns with another fascinatingly well-made biopic about another elusive subject, "sex doctor" Alfred Kinsey. Beautifully directed from a very clever script, this film courts controversy as it echoes Kinsey's own refusal to moralise.

Kinsey's (Neeson) early life is woven together in a series of flashbacks as he's interviewed by his colleagues (Sarsgaard, O'Donnell and Hutton). Raised by a strict religious father (Lithgow), Kinsey studied zoology at university and became a wasp expert before turning his attention to the human animal, an approach that's still fairly radical. His interest was in the most taboo of human subjects, sexuality, and in interviewing hundreds of people he made shocking discoveries that are still ignored. Mostly because we still don't like to talk about these things!

Where Hollywood movies would sanitise and simplify Kinsey's life and views to avoid offending anyone, Condon takes a bold and unapologetic approach. Nothing is judged here--Kinsey's liberal attitudes toward sex, which are echoed by his wife (Linney) and colleagues, are presented in a way that dares us to open our minds and understand a new point of view. Audiences with a black-and-white worldview will find this as impossible to accept as Kinsey's findings.

But more unbiased viewers will be rewarded by a strikingly introspective look at a man who simply couldn't understand why no one got what he was trying to say! The actors all get deep into their characters, people who refuse to be pigeonholed even as they're marginalized. As a result, the film makes a strong statement about human diversity without ever spelling it out for us. "Just open your eyes and see it."

Condon is also smart enough to fill the film with real-life wit and honesty, jolting us with moments that are hilarious, shocking and strongly emotional. Whether we agree with Kinsey or not, his work has changed the way we think about sex. And his approach has also given countless people hope in the fact that they're not alone. The gap between what we assume people do and what they really do is huge. And this important film reminds us that, even now, we prefer to live in ignorance.

Rich Cline

 

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