Sexual Healing
Kinsey, starring Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Saarsgard, John Lithgow, Oliver Platt, Tim Curry, Chris O’Donnell, Timothy Hutton
As the subject for a bio-pic, Dr. Albert Kinsey represents a challenging choice. While he produced the, ahem, seminal Sexual Behavior in the Human Male that blew the doors open on American’s cloistered sexual habits, he could also be emotionally distant and almost doctrinaire in his approach to overturning orthodoxy. Later in his career, he encouraged destructive promiscuity with and among his coterie of assistants, and he also implemented unethical research methods such as having his assistants sleep with subjects.
Despite this challenge, Liam Neeson and director Bill Condon, who directed the excellent Gods and Monsters and who more recently wrote the screenplay for Chicago, succeed in constructing a complex portrait of a man shaped by two main forces—his strict minister of a father, played here by John Lithgow, and Kinsey’s unwavering belief in science. While Neeson never achieves the sublime heights of characterization that Jamie Foxx does in Ray—perhaps because of the inherent qualities of the respective men they are portraying—he nevertheless is able to revealingly portray a complicated and sometimes troubled man who, despite his flaws, was ultimately motivated by a desire to help his fellow man.
The movie looks at Kinsey’s early childhood, but spends most of its time on his life after he became a respected biology professor at Indiana University. Having studied gall wasps and become fascinated by their incredible diversity—he eventually collected over one million specimens—he later applied the same approach to his study of human sexuality, which to that point had never been looked at in any kind of systematic fashion. While his first book on male sexuality was lauded as a breakthrough, his second book on female sexuality predictably raised hackles among conservative and religious groups, threatening his funding. In the end, Kinsey died before he was able to complete the various studies he envisioned doing.
As Kinsey’s supportive wife, Laura Linney gives her usual strong performance, but her role is largely secondary in this film. Peter Saarsgard as Clyde Martin, Kinsey’s chief assistant and at one time, his lover, is perfectly cast, with the actor’s lidded eyes and thin voice striking just the right note of ambiguity and even a hint of danger.
Kinsey utilizes an elegant device of having the movie framed by his assistants interviewing Kinsey himself, leading naturally to flashbacks of his own sexual history, and also revealing his methodology. Of the thousands of sexual histories he recorded, some even now have the power to shock, including that of a man who had sex with 9,600 people including boys and girls (note: this film is not for the squeamish).
Kinsey’s documentation of all the ways that human beings are polymorphously perverse, to use Freud’s phrase, was undoubtedly an important achievement, but it also had mixed consequences--some viewed Kinsey's cataloging of all types of sexual behavior as tacit approval of all such acts, including those considered criminal, , while others felt liberated to explore alternative forms of consensual sex by realizing that they were far from alone in favoring them.
In the end, the film nicely balances the negative and positive consequences of Kinsey’s work—and of his life—by honestly depicting instances of each.
Stars: ***
As the subject for a bio-pic, Dr. Albert Kinsey represents a challenging choice. While he produced the, ahem, seminal Sexual Behavior in the Human Male that blew the doors open on American’s cloistered sexual habits, he could also be emotionally distant and almost doctrinaire in his approach to overturning orthodoxy. Later in his career, he encouraged destructive promiscuity with and among his coterie of assistants, and he also implemented unethical research methods such as having his assistants sleep with subjects.
Despite this challenge, Liam Neeson and director Bill Condon, who directed the excellent Gods and Monsters and who more recently wrote the screenplay for Chicago, succeed in constructing a complex portrait of a man shaped by two main forces—his strict minister of a father, played here by John Lithgow, and Kinsey’s unwavering belief in science. While Neeson never achieves the sublime heights of characterization that Jamie Foxx does in Ray—perhaps because of the inherent qualities of the respective men they are portraying—he nevertheless is able to revealingly portray a complicated and sometimes troubled man who, despite his flaws, was ultimately motivated by a desire to help his fellow man.
The movie looks at Kinsey’s early childhood, but spends most of its time on his life after he became a respected biology professor at Indiana University. Having studied gall wasps and become fascinated by their incredible diversity—he eventually collected over one million specimens—he later applied the same approach to his study of human sexuality, which to that point had never been looked at in any kind of systematic fashion. While his first book on male sexuality was lauded as a breakthrough, his second book on female sexuality predictably raised hackles among conservative and religious groups, threatening his funding. In the end, Kinsey died before he was able to complete the various studies he envisioned doing.
As Kinsey’s supportive wife, Laura Linney gives her usual strong performance, but her role is largely secondary in this film. Peter Saarsgard as Clyde Martin, Kinsey’s chief assistant and at one time, his lover, is perfectly cast, with the actor’s lidded eyes and thin voice striking just the right note of ambiguity and even a hint of danger.
Kinsey utilizes an elegant device of having the movie framed by his assistants interviewing Kinsey himself, leading naturally to flashbacks of his own sexual history, and also revealing his methodology. Of the thousands of sexual histories he recorded, some even now have the power to shock, including that of a man who had sex with 9,600 people including boys and girls (note: this film is not for the squeamish).
Kinsey’s documentation of all the ways that human beings are polymorphously perverse, to use Freud’s phrase, was undoubtedly an important achievement, but it also had mixed consequences--some viewed Kinsey's cataloging of all types of sexual behavior as tacit approval of all such acts, including those considered criminal, , while others felt liberated to explore alternative forms of consensual sex by realizing that they were far from alone in favoring them.
In the end, the film nicely balances the negative and positive consequences of Kinsey’s work—and of his life—by honestly depicting instances of each.
Stars: ***
posted by Captain Nemo at 8:54 PM
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