Review

Review Date: 28-November-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Kinsey (2004)

In the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, film critic Owen Gleiberman muses on the demise of cinematic storytelling and points to character, not plot, as the hard-to-find key which "lures us into a kind of communion, a fluid and enveloping connection that remains long after the movie ends." By some strange coincidence, I read this article immediately after watching a film whose central character affected me unexpectedly and profoundly. "Kinsey" will attract and repel the public with its frank sexual content and overt challenge to the rising tide of conservatism, but its real claim to fame should be its portrait of a unique man in all his marvelous, flawed humanity. Time will tell how long my connection with "Kinsey" will remain, but I cannot imagine ever losing my appreciation for Liam Neeson's towering, one-of-a-kind performance in the title role.

Indiana University professor Alfred Kinsey came to the attention of the world (and thus, eventually, to writer/director Bill Condon) by publishing the bestseller Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948. In doing so, he blew the lid off a topic which had hitherto been considered taboo and fulfilled a destiny that began when he was the sin-fearing son of a Methodist preacher (John Lithgow). After a short history of its hero, including a break with his father in his late teens, the movie moves quickly into the period of his life when things started to get interesting. At age 27, as a bachelor content with the pursuits of academia and entomology, Kinsey suddenly finds himself courted by a woman named "Mac" (Laura Linney), who takes a hard look at his über-nerd lifestyle, hesitates briefly, and then agrees to become his wife.

The Kinseys' marriage (commenced with a clumsy, mutual loss of virginity) is the thread that holds the picture together and gives its errant wanderer a necessary point of reference. With the candor of the social misfit who has no clue and less interest in what other people expect, Kinsey allows his own discovery of sex to infiltrate his career, hitting upon the idea that (a) sex can and should be studied like any other branch of science, and (b) this will liberate all America from the sort of ignorance and restraint that marked his youth and early adulthood. Thus he begins to interview subjects from every walk of life, amassing clinical data on sexual practices with two of his assistants (Chris O'Donnell, Timothy Hutton) and engaging in personal sexual exploration with a third (Peter Sarsgaard, riveting as always).

But just as he allows the wonder of marital intimacy to dictate his studies, so does Kinsey allow his controversial research to affect his relationships. Here lies the truly affecting part of the tale: the inescapable link between sex and the heart, which separates us from other animals and makes our lives more complicated, and the protagonist's slippery insistence on viewing the world and his actions in scientific terms. The movie invites both amusement and aggravation as Kinsey drags himself and everyone he cares about into an obsessive pursuit of the Meaning of Sex, overlooking a lot of good data about love and human nature that might have served him better as a man, if not as a cultural phenomenon.

Condon's exposition of the backlash that greeted Kinsey's second sex book is a bit muddled (and he almost breaks the spell with a cutesy reconciliation between Kinsey and his father), but he consistently strikes gold with his leading man. Neeson is funny, disturbing, and deeply sympathetic as a guy who stumbles upon a simple fact of life — that sex defines us whether we want it to or not — and tries to use it to free the world and himself.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.