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KINSEY Send This Review to a Friend
High on my list of favorites from the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival is “Kinsey,” now in commercial release. It is an important and provocative drama exploring the lives of Alfred Kinsey and his wife, and the role they played in advancing attitudes toward sex and open discussion of it, making many feel they were not alone in their activities and preferences.
Liam Neeson gives one of the year’s finest performances as the pioneer who won praise and condemnation for devoting his life to studying sexuality. Laura Linney, ever a marvel, brings humor, subtlety, feistiness and compassion to her portrayal of his wife, Clara, starting from her student days at Indiana University, where she fell in love with Dr. Kinsey, her professor.
The film is also effective in dramatizing the effect that immersion in sexual study and field inquiries had on the Kinseys and their staff, and the entwinement of personal relationships stimulated by the explorations. Writer-director Bill Condon has provided a mature, unflinching and candid screenplay.
John Lithgow is especially good as Kinsey’s fanatically rigid father, who harbors his own secrets, and Lynn Redgrave delivers a smashing cameo performance near the end that sums up in human terms the effect of Kinsey’s accomplishments on some individuals. The excellent cast also includes Chris O’Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt and Dylan Baker.
As is proper and essential for a film dealing with sexual habits, “Kinsey” is explicit where required and deftly covers necessary territory. There is also sufficient humor interspersed to make the film entertaining even while being serious about the subject. Kinsey became controversial in his time, but unquestionably paved the way for greater awareness of sex as diversely practiced. Other studies followed but Kinsey’s 1948 “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” was the pioneer.
Older people may remember the impact when the report was first published. Younger audiences may not be aware of how much fervor and controversy it stirred. The film is a reminder and especially important now, in light of the wave of attempted repression in the name of morality that is increasingly threatening free expression. In an age of un-enlightenment in which creationism is trumping science in some places, candid sex study could be imperiled. “Kinsey” emerges as a bold film even in the year 2004. It is also an extremely fine film, among the best of the year. A Fox Searchlight Pictures release.
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