"Kinsey" is a fine film for serious moviegoers, many of whom won't have a chance to see a biopic about a long dead controversial sex researcher whose name is barely if at all known to younger people today. My guess is this won't hit the multiplexes for long and in some places, not at all.
Alfred Kinsey was born to parents right out of stereotypical fundamentalist, old-time (?) religion. His mother suffered a life of emotional subjugation from her bible-thumping, idiot husband who as portrayed here was a walking justification for patricide.
Young Alfred fled the dismal nest and established a narrow but genuinely important niche studying obscure insects and publishing significant but rarely read scholarship. He met his wife, a young student named Clara McMillen, and after a short courtship they married. As shown here the two virgins had less than a successful first conjugal experience, make that actually a misadventure.
Kinsey and "Mac" went on to successful copulation and he launched a lifelong dedication to studying the sex lives of Americans of every class and practice. His detailed interviews, with the aid of a hand-selected team of investigators, culminated in two tomes that shocked the country while selling very well. Kinsey created the modern, actually the first, American academy-based discipline of sex research at Indiana University. Without him where would Dr. Ruth be today?
No real need to dwell here on the specifics of Kinsey's research and his sudden burst of fame, not all of it welcome. Suffice it to note that the movie's details, including those about the doctor's bisexuality and his wife's casual acceptance of an open marriage, are largely accurate. Let's look AT the film.
With an excellent cast, director Bill Condon's two leads, Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, dominate every scene they're in, together or singly. Neeson's Kinsey, nicknamed "Prok," is both slyly manipulative and disarmingly naive and unaware of the potential firestorm his research might (and did) ignite. Neeson resembles the sex researcher and his projected mannerisms are those of a university scholar both immersed in the ivory tower and ready to take on a wider world. Neeson gives it his best which is very good indeed.
Laura Linney is superb as she ages from assertive student to young wife to wise collaborator and indispensable adviser. And a loving one too. Ms. Linney is very believable, partly thanks to understated but affecting make-up that has her age progression subtly but clearly advance throughout the movie.
Several supporting roles deserve mention. Peter Skarsgaard is fine as Kinsey's original research aide, Clyde Martin. Martin advances from Prok's classroom factotum to sharing fun beneath his boss's sheets but his loyalty to the project remains central. I enjoyed Oliver Platt as university president Herman Wells. Platt gives his character a decidedly realistic portrayal as the supportive quasi-boss of Kinsey has to increasingly deal with a multitude of off-campus critics who assail the researcher's findings about the variety and extent of American male AND female sexual practices.
And Lynn Redgrave's quick cameo scene at the very end is an unsurprising reminder of how wonderful an actress she is. Brava!
The flaws? It's one thing to do a biopic about a Nobel Prize winner's battle with insanity when the corpus of his research is clearly groundbreaking at and another to try to explain the life of a man whose research and books still attract criticism and were, in any event, the first groundswell of a new industry. While Neeson's Kinsey is complex, the real man was more so and, inevitably, "snapshots" of Kinsey's life including his relationship with his own kids are shallow and quick.
Kinsey's interviewing techniques were novel, strikingly so, but the extraordinary task of analyzing the results using a novel methodology - the real basis for his two main books on sex - isn't really explored and probably can't be in this medium. Credit goes to director Condon for a clever and effective use of voice-overs and a photo-montage superimposed on a map to project in very quick time the breadth not only of Kinsey's research but the enormous range of conduct it uncovered.
Given that in one form, open or not, many of the cats initially let out of the bag of repression and secrecy by Kinsey are now scurrying about the American political scene, "Kinsey" is timely, something I suspect the director, producers and cast didn't think much about when they started this production. But it is good to tell a younger generation that the sexual knowledge and associated freedoms they often take for granted haven't been around that long.
And don't miss the end-credits.
Not for young kids-their are brief shots of what were called in my youth "stag films," a term that has fallen into deserved desuetude in our age of gender neutral access to and often mutual enjoyment of porn.
8/10
Alfred Kinsey was born to parents right out of stereotypical fundamentalist, old-time (?) religion. His mother suffered a life of emotional subjugation from her bible-thumping, idiot husband who as portrayed here was a walking justification for patricide.
Young Alfred fled the dismal nest and established a narrow but genuinely important niche studying obscure insects and publishing significant but rarely read scholarship. He met his wife, a young student named Clara McMillen, and after a short courtship they married. As shown here the two virgins had less than a successful first conjugal experience, make that actually a misadventure.
Kinsey and "Mac" went on to successful copulation and he launched a lifelong dedication to studying the sex lives of Americans of every class and practice. His detailed interviews, with the aid of a hand-selected team of investigators, culminated in two tomes that shocked the country while selling very well. Kinsey created the modern, actually the first, American academy-based discipline of sex research at Indiana University. Without him where would Dr. Ruth be today?
No real need to dwell here on the specifics of Kinsey's research and his sudden burst of fame, not all of it welcome. Suffice it to note that the movie's details, including those about the doctor's bisexuality and his wife's casual acceptance of an open marriage, are largely accurate. Let's look AT the film.
With an excellent cast, director Bill Condon's two leads, Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, dominate every scene they're in, together or singly. Neeson's Kinsey, nicknamed "Prok," is both slyly manipulative and disarmingly naive and unaware of the potential firestorm his research might (and did) ignite. Neeson resembles the sex researcher and his projected mannerisms are those of a university scholar both immersed in the ivory tower and ready to take on a wider world. Neeson gives it his best which is very good indeed.
Laura Linney is superb as she ages from assertive student to young wife to wise collaborator and indispensable adviser. And a loving one too. Ms. Linney is very believable, partly thanks to understated but affecting make-up that has her age progression subtly but clearly advance throughout the movie.
Several supporting roles deserve mention. Peter Skarsgaard is fine as Kinsey's original research aide, Clyde Martin. Martin advances from Prok's classroom factotum to sharing fun beneath his boss's sheets but his loyalty to the project remains central. I enjoyed Oliver Platt as university president Herman Wells. Platt gives his character a decidedly realistic portrayal as the supportive quasi-boss of Kinsey has to increasingly deal with a multitude of off-campus critics who assail the researcher's findings about the variety and extent of American male AND female sexual practices.
And Lynn Redgrave's quick cameo scene at the very end is an unsurprising reminder of how wonderful an actress she is. Brava!
The flaws? It's one thing to do a biopic about a Nobel Prize winner's battle with insanity when the corpus of his research is clearly groundbreaking at and another to try to explain the life of a man whose research and books still attract criticism and were, in any event, the first groundswell of a new industry. While Neeson's Kinsey is complex, the real man was more so and, inevitably, "snapshots" of Kinsey's life including his relationship with his own kids are shallow and quick.
Kinsey's interviewing techniques were novel, strikingly so, but the extraordinary task of analyzing the results using a novel methodology - the real basis for his two main books on sex - isn't really explored and probably can't be in this medium. Credit goes to director Condon for a clever and effective use of voice-overs and a photo-montage superimposed on a map to project in very quick time the breadth not only of Kinsey's research but the enormous range of conduct it uncovered.
Given that in one form, open or not, many of the cats initially let out of the bag of repression and secrecy by Kinsey are now scurrying about the American political scene, "Kinsey" is timely, something I suspect the director, producers and cast didn't think much about when they started this production. But it is good to tell a younger generation that the sexual knowledge and associated freedoms they often take for granted haven't been around that long.
And don't miss the end-credits.
Not for young kids-their are brief shots of what were called in my youth "stag films," a term that has fallen into deserved desuetude in our age of gender neutral access to and often mutual enjoyment of porn.
8/10