Dr. Kinsey

Writer/Director Bill Condon does a thoroughly detailed, fascinating study of the life of famed sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in the drama, Kinsey. What would on surface seem unfilmable is done with great sensitivity and honesty.

Condon knows how to tell stories about real people (Gods and Monsters), and here is a life filled with curiosity and far reaching accomplishment.

Raised in a repressed family dominated by a stern father, Kinsey is portrayed as an isolated teen who rebels against not only his father, but against sexual convention. As a science instructor in college, he meets a student who becomes his wife. As other students look more and more to him for sexual advice, his original interest in insect studies changes to sex adviser and ultimately sex researcher. His team of assistants and even their wives become involved in the research. As Kinsey's study requires sample interviews across the country, a diverse, amazing discovery of sexual habits and statistics are revealed. The study ultimately becomes published in a groundbreaking best seller amid a swell of damnation from the public.

Condon interweaves the science with the human element in a very intelligent screenplay. It is remarkable that such a coherent storyline emerges from a multitude of scientific and news sources. The movie also says a lot about the state of the country at a time in mid twentieth century America when the Red Scare was in full swing and the populace was guided by the morals and sensibilities of its time. Kinsey's relationship with his wife is the thread that ties the film together thematically. She essentially becomes the barometer for his work and his shortcomings. Here is a man who was brilliant and at the same time fallible.

There is no epilogue at film's end as might be expected for a biography, but it is a nice touch for a film that tries to approach its subject with freshness and reverence. The set design and costumes are all authentic in period flavor, but the film seems to be focused not on marking the precise year but depicting an era or time. Do stay for the amusing end credits which show a veritable Noah's Ark of animals in their glory.

Liam Neeson is very good as the obsessed scientist who tries to conduct meaningful, quantifiable research while reconciling the emotional toll on his marriage and his friendships. Laura Linney is in fine form as the supportive wife who observes and then participates in her husband's venture.

As his research assistants, Timothy Hutton, Chris O'Donnell, and Peter Sarsgaard round out a very strong ensemble cast. In fact, these fine actors are almost wasted in supporting roles. John Lithgow is pitch perfect as Kinsey's cruel, insensitive father. There is a nice, near cameo appearance by Lynn Redgrave (Gods and Monsters) as the last interview of Kinsey, and she resonates in her brief appearance.

In keeping with the subject matter, there is graphic dialogue and sexual depictions, but there is nothing exploitive or without narrative purpose here. It is interesting to note that this film is coming on the heels of a moralistic backlash of media content and permissiveness. By showing how well-intended human studies into formerly taboo subjects helped to enlighten and reexamine human behavior, Kinsey proves to be the right film for the right time.

Sexual intercourse was something that was perfunctory for purposes of procreation, and was left intact under those circumstances until a person named Sigmund Freud came along. Freud's rudimentary experimentation with psycho-analytical behavior relevant to sex, as well as other intense emotions, brought on copious mores of conscious thoughts pertinent to the individual's taboo elements of their constitution such as the libido and the id!! By the late 1920's in America, Freud's elementary findings on sexual behavior motivated Alfred Kinsey to initiate research that purported the yearnings of many people nationwide about exposing their intimate desires concerning sex!! The revelation of such proclivities made Kinsey a phenomenon in sexual research after World War II!! Many people were mesmerized and intrigued by the Kinsey Report!!! Alfred Kinsey, a biologist by trade, was determined in his desire to attain a grass roots recognition of the myriad of actions that were predicated on impetuousness!! This movie's basic plot revealed Kinsey's desire for the exposure of the lewd endeavors and double entendre habits which afflicted many "different" people!! Such a depiction of this individual known as Alfred Kinsey sparked a milestone in sexual knowledge to the mainstream American public!!

Liam Neeson did a tremendous job of acting as the role of Kinsey!! The entire film evoked a candid admission concerning lustful desires. If there were no such thing as desires about sex with so many people, Kinsey's research would not have been considered a breakthrough!! The film also points out that Kinsey's ideological binges with his research were often times halted by a lack of funding!!! Much of Kinsey's findings resonated to hedonistic wishes, much of them also translated to blatant intimacy!! Novice excursions with sexual deviancy made Kinsey and his wife educationally curious!! Attaining knowledge through various experimentation that both Kinsey and his wife engaged in, transcended infidelity and callous fruition, and relegated the two of them to the precarious plight of the ultimate guinea pigs!! These were emotions that were not sanctioned by love, rather, they were motivated by capricious lust!! Intellectual rumination on the motives of socially adverse carnality invoked a plethora of academic findings for Kinsey!! The end result of such research made Kinsey an unmitigated madman for the acquisition of perverted information!!

I found this movie to be very consciously significant...It was very socially sensitizing, especially in terms of the comprehension of the dogged tenacity Kinsey had to expose the perplexing facts about sex!!! A critical component to unearthing facts about an issue such as sex was merely to talk about the issue of sex!! This film depicts Kinsey's determination to attain knowledge about the historical importance of research and development germane to human sexual behavior which altered the lifestyle patterns of American living!! The cinema accommodated provision to the movie audience for Kinsey's findings that were in fact revolutionary floodgates that opened the formulation of the attitudes people have today!! The introductory dialog to this film is outstanding, and excellent performances by Liam Neeson and Chris O'Donnell make this film worth watching over and over again!! Bottom line, See this movie at least once!!

My thoughts of "Kinsey" are completely summed up in the summary.

It is shallow in that it is almost completely devoid of any analysis, subtlety, or development of its characters; meaningless in that it presents nothing that isn't already known or couldn't be surmised from a documentary; and destined to be the most overrated film of the year in that most critics praise the film, almost blindly, ignoring the stilted dialogue, the almost nauseating depiction of human behavior - devoid of analytical follow-ups, and the very, VERY standard performances. The film includes a below average turn by Liam Neeson, who, despite perhaps giving a good impression of Kinsey, never manages to conceal his accent, and CANNOT handle any drama that needed to be conveyed. His dramatic scenes reminded me of those of Cary Elwes' in "Saw", and if you seen those scenes, you know what I mean.

"Kinsey" was utterly pointless as a movie. It featured a lot of depicted fact, a lot of graphic sex talk, and lot of graphic images that curiously managed to "sneak" past the MPAA's pocketbooks, I mean, ratings system. It never once attempted to show why "Kinsey" was fascinated by sex, why his constituents were so easily enveloped into his sexually lax world, or why Linney stayed with him. They never developed these characters at all. Their gross actions were never discussed or examined by the director.

There is a scene in "Kinsey" that sums up my opinion of the film. In it, a man being interviewed by Kinsey claims he has slept with basically everything. I mean EVERYTHING. Think of something, hes slept with it. He goes into graphic detail about his sex life and demonstrates his ability to obtain an erection and a subsequent self-administered orgasm in 10 seconds, all the while Kinsey just watches sternly, and his partner squirms, and eventually leaves in disgust. Later, the same partner is seen having sex with a much older woman for the purpose of the study, smiling raunchily while watching the grainy video of the deed. Why? Who knows? Is it in is character to be both disgusted by the actions of one man, and obviously enthralled by his own actions? No it isn't. And it seems that the director does not care to elaborate.

For sure, Condon manages to shock with his film. But by the end, the sex has become so repulsively clinical, that its shock value is lost, and the film really takes on no meaning, becoming just plain boring.

It tries to slap on a metaphor about men and trees at the end, but its just too quick and dirty to make up for the film's lack of analysis about its subject, or about America.

Why do critics and film patrons hail the film? It shows what most films aren't allowed to show. Any film that non-chalantly features graphic female and male nudity, frequently, and can still be featured with an R rating at any movie theatre most be an edgy great movie, right? Wrong. (And may I just note that an increasing amount of male nudity has found its way into major theaters through indie, artsy films like "Kinsey" and "Sideways". Its interesting to note that two of the most well-reviewed films of the year both break R-rated bounds frequently within their running times).

With such a high pedigree in its creative team, it seems almost impossible for the film to be anything other than superb. But for this moviegoer, it, no pun intended, sucked the big one.

Bill Condon, working with his own material has come out with a movie that serves to illustrate how the work of Dr. Kinsey awoke the American public to a better understanding of their sexuality in ways no one, up to that point, had ever dared to show. As he proved with his other film, "Gods and Monsters", Mr. Condon shows he doesn't mind tackling adult themes, so scarce in the present cinema.

The film is documentary in style, as we are shown the life of Kinsey at different times of his life. He had an unhappy childhood. His father was a tyrant who never really showed love toward him. There are moments when the young Kinsey is shown as boy scout and there is an element of homosexuality that maybe, for fear, never came to the surface, but it's there, nonetheless.

Dr. Kinsey's life takes a turn when he meets, Clara McMillen, who he calls "Mac". It's with her that he begins a life of discovery in the field of human sexuality that was taboo in American colleges and universities at the time. Albert Kinsey was the first one that spoke about the things that were never said in polite company, or in the classroom, up to that moment. His life was dedicated to understand what made human beings act the way they did, never being judgmental, but with a tremendous insight to interpret the data and present it in a comprehensible way.

A puritanical American society reacted strongly against the findings of Dr. Kinsey. He was a man ahead of his times when he decided to gather information about the sex lives of Americans and to publish the results in a best selling book.

As Dr. Kinsey, Liam Neeson, showing an uncanny resemblance to the man, himself, does a wonderful job. He shows a complicated character who was not easily understood by his associates and students. As "Mac", his wife, Laura Linney with a dark wig, gives an articulate performance of Mrs. Kinsey. Both actors are wonderful together, as they have already shown in the New York stage.

Peter Sargaard, as Clyde, Dr. Kinsey's first assistant, shows he is an actor that will amaze from picture to picture. This actor has the ability to get under each of his character's skins to make them real, as is the case with his Clyde. Also, almost unrecognizable, Chris O'Donnell, who plays Wardell, one of the interviewers working with the doctor. Timothy Hutton is Gebhard, the other associate who was instrumental in gathering the information to help complete Dr. Kinsey's report. John Lithgow, as Kinsey Sr. has a fantastic moment with Mr. Neeson, as he agrees to be interviewed, revealing a horrible secret. It's a wonderful moment done with panache by both actors working under exceptional direction.

There is a moment toward the end of the film where we see Lynn Redgrave speaking directly to the camera. It is one of the most effective moments in the film when this woman tells Dr. Kinsey about her life as a lesbian.

Mr. Condon's film clarifies a lot about the genius of Kinsey and his contribution to society.

Just as the focus of "Kinsey" thought he was being objective about a topic that had only been treated subjectively, the film is not an objective bio-pic.

For the first half of the movie, the exquisite production design, costumes and make-up effectively recreate middle America before World War II, as Kinsey's rigid upbringing and equally rigid scientific life as a zoologist are established.

Laura Linney as first his student then his wife adds an earthy and warm element and her excellent acting adds womanliness beyond the script to the movie that is missing otherwise. Their gradual move into teaching and studying sexuality is shown convincingly in contrast to the prigs around them, with, ironically surely, Tim Curry playing his puritanical academic rival.

Accurate details include showing and reading from a popular marriage manual, Theodoor H. van de Velde's "Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique;" when I ran a used book sale at my local synagogue we would get many unread copies donated from now elderly couples who had received it as part of pre-marital rabbinical counseling and it was hilarious how sexist and inaccurate it was.

But writer/director Bill Condon takes considerable interpretive leaps as he moves on to "the inner circle," as T. Coraghessan Boyle terms it in his fictionalized interpretation, when Kinsey hires, trains, works and lives closely with male assistants for his first research project on men.

Peter Sarsgaard is the stand out in the trio, as outstanding as his role in "Shattered Glass" and as all holds barred as in "The Center of the World." But his characterization leans toward a cavalier attitude towards women that is emblematic of this film until literally the last minute. I don't see why his character would be jealous to the point of fisticuffs of the attentions Timothy Hutton's flirtatious assistant would be paying to his wife when he seemed to condescend to marriage only for appearance's sake anyway.

The film dwells on gay men and skips through the research done to produce the second tome on women, pointing out mostly Kinsey's corrective biological information, therefore gliding over how it was the revelations about women that shocked the nation and led to difficult political and other consequences, though Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman had promulgated similar information about women decades earlier (and had been hounded out of the country for their efforts). The Kinsey Institute's FAQ on their Web site point out the active partnership of female research assistants for this work, who simply don't exist in the film. (And the Congressional investigations of foundations in the 1950's didn't just focus on the Rockefeller Foundation's funding of Kinsey, but they haven't yet posted their correctives on their Web site.)

Similarly, as Kinsey is shown taking the leap from taxonomy to adviser as an avatar of the coming sexual revolution, the psychological component of relationships, let alone sex, only comes up once such that Liam Neeson's characterization ultimately seems naive. But Condon is more interested in the political component, as he clearly sees a similar tide of conservative criticism rising across the land again.

One also gets the feeling that someone either read the script or saw a working print of the film and had to gently point out to Condon that women simply get short shrift, so suddenly an extremely poignant coda is added, with Lynn Redgrave as a very moving interviewee on how Kinsey's work affected her life directly.

The aging make-up and cinematography are beautiful in indicating the passage of time, matching seasonal passings and making early discussions seem to have been documented in black and white.

The casting of the many research subjects is wonderfully varied and the New York metropolitan area locations, recognizable only to the cognoscenti, stand in very well for varied cities, academic and sylvan locales.

The closing credits are surrounded by fun period songs and zoological interactions.