Originally published 11/17/04
Kinsey
Director: Bill Condon
Writer: Bill Condon
Producers: Gail Mutrux
Stars: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris O’Donnell, Timothy Hutton, Oliver Platt, Dylan Baker, William Sadler, Lynn Redgrave
We understand so much in a scene where Dr. Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson) confesses to his wife Clara (Laura Linsey) that he’s had an affair with a man, his strapping bisexual research assistant (Peter Sarsgaard) no less. Clara prides herself on open-midedness, and understands the heart of her husband’s pioneering sex study lies in embracing the naturalness of all manner of sexual impulses. This one takes work to accept, even though she’ll eventually see that same strapping assistant looking her way, and realize there are fringe benefits. But as she hears her husband’s admission, through her tears she admits it wasn’t a complete shock – “I have observed a few things over the years…”
And Kinsey suddenly perks up – “Such as?” Even at the depths of personal crisis, nothing arouses him so much as observable data.
Kinsey was no less fervent a believer than his father (John Lithgow). But while Kinsey, Sr. pounded the pulpit and preached the rejection of our animal side (and the dangerous evil lurking behind such modern innovations as the zipper), Kinsey Jr. devoted his life to studying that animal side. His relentless belief in the virtue of scientific inquiry fueled him, gave him satisfaction and joy as well as, we sense, a certain measure of revenge.
The result of his devotion was an extraordinary shift in America’s cultural attitude about sex, and Kinsey is an extraordinary movie. It shows us, with a mix of authoritative detail and creative flair, how while Kinsey himself was far from a perfect man, when it came to addressing the conspicuous gap of knowledge about what Americans did with their genitals, his unique and quirky blend of statistical obsessiveness and rejection of social constraint made him the right man.
A professor of biology at Indiana University, Kinsey is an authority on the gall wasp, whose nearly infinite diversity captivates him. He’s decided that, since no two are alike, there can be no such thing as a “normal” gall wasp, only common traits and rare ones. And the best way to determine what’s common is to collect as many as he can. Eventually he collects a million.
Along the way he meets student Clara MacMillan. When she asks to join him as he lunches on the campus lawn, he asks a simple, baffled “Why?” When she points out that he’s the only unattached male and she the only unattached female in the vicinity, he smiles and makes room on his blanket: “That’s very sensible!”
Kinsey was the classic lonely eccentric whose habits first developed from a lack of sensitivity for typical behavior, but later compounded by devising unconscious barriers to test potential intimates. Clara passes with flying colors, and Laura Linney, every bit the equal of Liam Neeson in humanizing these unforgettable characters, adds yet another sterling entry to her recent independent film resume.
Their initial “marital” encounters are painful and awkward, but a refreshingly frank doctor reveals to them that not only is Mrs. Kinsey’s difficulty accommodating Mr. Kinsey’s considerable size common, it is easily reparable. And after that, the happy couple is going at it like jackrabbits.
Kinsey’s openness about sex wins him a reputation on campus, and soon students are bringing him all their awkward questions. He realizes to his horror that not only do they suffer absurd misunderstandings (many spread by the stuffy, prayer-promoting “hygiene” teacher played by Tim Curry), there’s an appalling lack of data to point to when reassuring them that, for example, masturbation doesn’t cause dementia, and oral sex performed on the female doesn’t damage her birthing capabilities.
He’s fighting an attitude much like that of the farm in northern Michigan where I attended a family reunion years ago, and the kids were told not to go into the barn at night because that’s where the “pig monster” lurked. Maybe the simple truth can’t always convey the urgency and danger some deem necessary for obedience. But are consenting adults expected to remain obedient and ignorant? Deep beneath the surface of the movie is the suggestion that those who most strongly opposed Kinsey thought (and still think) yes.
Kinsey starts a course in “marriage”, and in surveying his own students’ private lives, the answers he gets back are nothing short of earth-shattering. People are doing things in numbers and varieties even his imagination wouldn’t have predicted. His appetite for data whetted, he sets out to get more.
He devises an elaborate questionnaire consisting of hundreds of sexual queries and rigorously trains volunteers (Saarsgard, Chris O’Donnell, Timothy Hutton) to not only deliver them from memory, but to address every subject with openness and lack of judgment. To Kinsey, it was the necessary attitude to produce accurate answers. But to an America surging against religious repression, it was the catalyst for revolution.
Neeson stays true to Kinsey even as his books Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and the Female sequel make him celebrity, counter-cultural hero, and moral pariah. He is brash, opinionated, temperamental, and tunnel-visioned (particularly to the emotional consequences of the bed-hopping he tacitly encourages among his researchers), but because his fierce loyalty is always to the data, he proves difficult to ignore. Bill Condon, writer/director behind the beautiful Gods and Monsters, has given all his actors gifts with their well-rounded characters, but none more so than Neeson.
Kinsey today remains an immensely polarizing figure, some accusing him baselessly of such horrors as pedophilia and sole responsibility for the spread of AIDS. The movie well acknowledges the challenge of his legacy with two scenes that provide unforgettable cameos to a pair of actors. One is a woman whose life was quite literally saved by the knowledge that she was not alone in her desires. The other is an unapologetic monster who records in a thick book the date and duration of thousands of sexual encounters, hundreds of them with children. Was it wrong for Kinsey to record his history without condemnation, without reporting him to authorities? Doctor/patient and lawyer/client confidentiality is equally painful, and Kinsey’s work opened previously locked doors into the pedophile mindset.
The movie is not about telling anyone the right way to conduct your sex life. It simply believes that, to the extent that we know what we’re doing and nobody’s getting hurt, there’s nothing wrong with doing what makes us feel good if we want to. But, most importantly of all, we should be willing to talk about it. Kinsey wittily, provocatively, and powerfully, talks about it.