The Berkeley Beacon

Issue date: 11/18/04 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Laura Linney discusses the measure of a man with Liam Neeson in Kinsey. [Click to enlarge]

"Let's talk about sex," the ads for Kinsey proclaim. And talk it does-about orgasms, penis size, extramarital affairs, homosexuality, bestiality and incest, among many other topics. Where writer-director Bill Condon's second feature (the first, Gods and Monsters, won him a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 1999) comes up short is in the way it depicts pioneer sex researcher Alfred Kinsey's methods but not his madness.

Liam Neeson plays Kinsey as the film chronicles his pensive boyhood, followed by an obsessive dedication to entomology as a college professor in the 1950s. Sexually inexperienced, he weds Clara MacMillan (Laura Linney) and begins to explore the undetermined relation of science to sex. He decides to gather massive amounts of sexual histories and publish the findings as scientific theory.

The misunderstood genius (and mild irrationality) of Kinsey was that he viewed sex as strictly biological behavior, with each person experiencing different proclivities than the next. In a society obsessed with conventional family values, such ideas were unheard of and offensive, and the best parts of Kinsey stress the innateness and humanity of common sexual practices.

"Movies make you complicit with their central figures," Condon said in a recent interview with The Beacon. "They expand people's tolerance for things you wouldn't expect. To understand Kinsey and put in front of people what he did is valuable."

But while Condon's film means well in its natural, shameless treatment of commonly embarrassing issues, it also lionizes a figure that would be better represented through ambiguousness.

Kinsey's approach to sex was more clinical than anything else. In taking a warm, sentimental approach to him, the film negates the same objectivity it praises in its central character.

As a character study, Kinsey is moderately involving, with Neeson being primarily responsible for conveying the ticks and quirks of Kinsey's personality, even if the script is too concerned with the mounting episodes of the plot to develop them. As a film biography, traditional uplift prevails as brief nuances are eclipsed by more obvious devices.

The film bristles from event to event with workmanlike consistency but only occasionally scrounges the depths of Kinsey's conviction. Kinsey views sex as a universally human yet individually differing act, and thus exposes 1950s views on topics such as homosexuality and sex education as ludicrous and dated. These somewhat-clichéd revelations are overused and mostly unnecessary. Kinsey shocks audiences by flaunting the ignorance of antiquated attitudes about sex when it should let the doctor's trademark candor do the talking.

"Kinsey had the notion that sex was a factory of emotion," Condon said. "The film is about the connection between people and the contradictory aspects of sex. He's a scientist who studies sex; in his cocoon, he is doing science, but sex is never just about sex, and he was trying to make it just about sex, which is mostly impossible. He is such a contradictory person and there are fringe people who demonize him, but we have competing ideas in society all the time."

For a film that deals with such hot-button subjects, it is awfully conventional and a much more congratulatory piece than Milos Forman's similarly-themed The People vs. Larry Flynt. Forman's invention was to depict the unapologetic pornographer Flynt as both a smut peddler and a beacon of the first amendment. By showing Kinsey only as a savior for the sexually frustrated, Condon ignores the ideological flaws underneath the surface.

Neeson, as always, digs as deeply into his source material as possible, embodying Kinsey's stern pleasantness and ambitious grandeur. He is ably supported by Linney, with whom he shares little chemistry but who musters enough of her dependable skill to make them a credible pair.

Additional help is provided by Peter Sarsgaard, Chris O'Donnell and Timothy Hutton as Kinsey's devoted underlings, Oliver Platt as a helpful colleague, and John Lithgow in a thanklessly written but pivotal role as Kinsey's fanatically religious father.

The sexual content is frank but not exceedingly graphic. If anything, it is chaste considering the subject matter. Full-frontal nudity, including close-ups of male and female genitalia, is tastefully, even-handedly presented, a move that would no doubt make Kinsey proud.

This aspect of the production was essential to Condon. "I was more concerned about depicting [Kinsey] clinically," he said. "Laura Linney's character humanizes him, but I don't think you feel him opening up until you've seen the whole movie. I do feel he's sympathetic; I did really feel for him."

Kinsey is a film that wants to make its subject's point for him. By neglecting the distinct human core of Kinsey himself, it deprives itself of a more rounded view and a more interesting story. A piece about a man whose insights were empowering and revolutionary, Kinsey does not so much shatter taboos as preach to the choir.

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