Kinsey

Liam Neeson is a terrific actor, and Dr. Alfred Kinsey is his character. After seeing "Kinsey" I can't imagine anyone else better for the role. People usually say that, I know, but you couldn't possibly imagine anyone else playing the part, ever. I think Neeson has a strong chance at winning an Oscar this year; as does Laura Linney, playing Kinsey's wife, a terrifically kind, warm woman trying to keep up with Kinsey's life, which moves along pretty fast. Too fast for her at times. These two performances are awesome, two of the actors' best, the Academy, and every other awards show, would have to be insane not to mention them.

Unfortunately, I don't think the rest of the movie is really up to par with the performances. Not to say it's bad, just that it fails to really interest us when Neeson or Linney aren't on screen (which, fortunately, doesn't happen much). The movie is about Alfred Kinsey, who pioneered the research on human sexuality. Neeson shows him as a strong man, but one with as many flaws as the gall wasps he collected, all buried deep beneath his drive and focus.

Kinsey's studies proved some things, and let a lot of homosexuality and other deviances from the norm at the time out into the open. I'd just like to say that I agree with some of his studies, I like that he unlocked the way uptight supposed "morality" of the masses think that any sexual behavior other than the missionary position is both unhealthy and immoral. How they thought that I don't know, but I admire Kinsey for proving them wrong. Other things I do not agree with, like Kinsey's studies on the time it takes really young children to reach orgasm…and Kinsey's way of thinking that sex on its basic level should have no emotional attachment; I think I can say that these things are ethically wrong without feeling ignorant.

But I won't be biased against the quality of the film because of this. I will speak of the technique of how it was made: the writing, the directing, etc. I liked how the movie began: with a black and white practice interview between Kinsey, his wife Clara, and their students. It is inter-cut with scenes from Kinsey's youth: Kinsey facing temptation with masturbation, and having trouble with his insanely strict father (John Lithgow).

Lithgow's first scene, where he speaks of the temptation and evil caused by zippers, electricity and ice cream parlors is the film's first problem. It doesn't show both sides of Kinsey's argument, it merely dismisses Lithgow – and those like him – as a laughing stock, instead of considering any validity in points that they're making.

This problem is carried throughout the movie, and Lithgow is seen as such a monster that we feel no sympathy for his character in a later scene showing his inner weakness and tragic past, the scene feels thrown in and very foreign to the rest of the movie.

I think the opening scenes, with Kinsey and Clara first falling for each other, and his proposal and collection of gall wasps, are the movie's best, I believe. Once Kinsey starts his research on sex I think the movie becomes a bit conventional. We get the usual scenes such as Kinsey alienated from his family, Kinsey receiving trouble from his financial backers, Clara feeling alienated from Kinsey, and so on. Of course, most of the time we watch eagerly, because Neeson and Linney are awesome, but we still have that itching feeling that the film isn't as special as Ebert says.

What I mean is, after decades of biopics, especially this year; a biopic has to be more than conventional. Unless the lead character is amazing and extremely watchable, like in "Ray", the film needs to show us something new. I mean, when you see a biopic, you pretty much know the lead is going be alienated from his family, obsessed with his work and full of inner demons. So give us something else, please.

Problems also arise with the introduction of Kinsey's staff, including bisexual Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), Wardell Pomeroy (Chris O'Donnell) and Paul Gebhart (Timothy Hutton). The problem is, we hardly know any of these characters, so we are bored when they get into arguments because we don't feel that we know anything about them. When we find out that Martin is bisexual it comes as a surprise, but we react with a shrug. Sarsgaard's performance is surprisingly flat; that he's getting any buzz for awards surprises me.

I'm giving the movie a seven simply because of the professionalism Neeson and Linney display on screen. They are the acting pros; they wash the floor with the rest of the cast. The Academy voters will all be struck by lightning if either isn't mentioned. So see it for them, and about the rest, well, shrug.

7/10

Here's a major problem in drama. You want to deal with big issues, great disembodied, cosmic sweeps of things. Things that people love or make them suffer. This is why people come.

But the tools we have to display these things are humans, usually. So the dramatist has to invent or find situations that have humans, human behavior and these grandsweeps entangled in some way. And it has to be a particular way so that the engagement with the humans on the screen leads us somehow to those sweeps.

Sometimes the connection is daft as we equate certain people as surrogates for trends. I had a school teacher that (twice!) showed us "Johnny Tremain" as our main lesson on the Revolutionary War.

Okay. One of the big things that entices and scars us is sex, and particularly its incomprehensible but overwhelming nature. So what makes more sense to us, who wish to understand it, than a story about a man who dedicated his life to understanding it?

Well, there are two problems, long before you get to the skill of the thing. The first is that if the character is to bring us to the topic, he has to be fully entangled. The two have to merge in a way that when we see and understand him, we find ourselves incidentally in the clouds of the thing he represents. It doesn't happen.

And part of the reason is the nature of the man himself. Ordinary audiences think of science as a single notion. But it is not. There is the business of noting what is there, but that is the secretarial work of science. Mere accounting. Then there is the business of spinning abstractions, models, theories then insight and understanding. Kinsey was the first and blindly so, in fact he would appear to a full scientist just as Tim Curry's character is to him here.

Counting is not comprehension. So in real life, this is more of a "Tucker" story than a John Nash one. And it is mighty hard to weave that entanglement if it was never there, and the nature of the thing takes you in the wrong direction.

What underscores this is that the opposing forces here — religious moralists, pontificating politicians — are stronger and more numerous today when it comes to matters sexual than more than 50 years ago. There's been negative progress, both because Kinsey was off, but also because people like those behind this film actually thought that was the good fight.

Linney gets it. She's a pleasure in any project. She gets it because she conveys to us the simple tolerance of her man and all that surrounds him, including the film crew and we the audience. She shows us all that she knows we're fooling ourselves about this, and that wisdom and insight is deadly elusive.

Its going to take more than the Ron Howard school of film-making to make us fly into sexual insights. it is a clever idea to frame the thing as an interview with him, to introduce him as an interviewer. Just not enough.

There's a very fine bit of acting in this. Almost at the end, in less than three minutes, Lynn Redgrave is an interviewee who tells Kinsey he saved her life. Watch it and believe. Here is an example of how that entanglement can work.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

One of the mid-20th century sexologists, Alfred C. Kinsey, is brought to life through a stellar performance by Liam Neeson. Screenplay writer & director, Bill Condon, who should have won an Oscar for "Gods and Monsters," uses an enticing technique of switching between B&W scenes & color ones. In the former, Kinsey is depicted as a subject, in a clinical setting, responding to his own sex survey questions. In the latter, Condon takes us through flashbacks of choice intimate events during Kinsey's younger life. This combination of screenplay & direction movement between the past in color & the present in B&W seems contradictory. However, it is quite effective to draw out the importance of how significant, if not 'colorful', Kinsey's upbringing was while living in his father-preacher's (John Lithgow) anti-sexual & puritanical home.

Kinsey's sexology includes so many open-ended questions that they leave room for respondents to elaborate upon their true sexual experiences. Their thousands of responses included in Kinsey's research {published as "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) & "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)} are anything but black & white! It is to Kinsey's credit, his passion, the effectiveness of his research techniques, that sexology discovered US respondents were eager to speak about sex. Since Kinsey's findings are not what the US public expected to learn, his research became controversial. For instance, the first book found males had many more same-gender sexual experiences than anyone imagined. The second book really rocked the world when Kinsey's research showed that females shared the same sexual desires as males! From the start of the film to the end it is loaded with sexological words: in other words, the clinical names for genital body parts & sexual activities. Sexual activities are spoken of scientifically & sometimes depicted. This is not by any means a pornographic motion picture. It is about the science of sexology. But, most especially, it is a fine film that aptly portrays both the research & intimate passions of the world famous US sexologist, Kinsey.

It's not necessarily an adults-only film; depending upon how well prepared & educated teens are in studies of human sexual behavior. I feel Condon masters the topics of sexology & sexualities.

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!!

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.