Movie Review: Kinsey
By William Sternman
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Kinsey
Starring Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Chris O'Donnell, and Peter Sarsgaard
Written and Directed by Bill Condon
When
Alfred Kinsey’s second book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,
was published in 1953, my mother condemned it (without having read it,
of course) because it taught young girls how to be “sexed.”
By then, she had given birth to three children. Although my father’s
name was Joseph, none of these births were due (that I know of) to immaculate
conception. I can’t help wondering how she got “sexed”
three times without either Kinsey’s tutelage or divine intervention.
This movie does not solve that puzzle.
Since she didn’t realize that knowing the truth could set her free (which she would have avoided at all costs), my mother wouldn’t have understood the gratitude that a middle-aged, formerly married woman expresses to Dr. Kinsey for giving her permission to acknowledge her hidden lesbianism and finally find happiness and fulfillment. This gratitude is expressed in a monologue at the end of the movie. Although it lasts for only a few minutes, it is Kinsey’s most powerful moment. Lynn Redgrave’s quiet reading is exquisitely nuanced and extraordinarily moving. I would nominate her for a best-supporting-actress Oscar despite the fact that when Martin Balsam was chosen as best supporting actor in 1965 for A Thousand Clowns, there was a general outcry because he wasn’t in the movie that much, As Alfred Kinsey himself might have pointed out, bigger is not always better. (Think of that exploding ocular pupil.)
Bill Condon’s film features many other talking-head shots that are almost as riveting: Kinsey’s colleagues (Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, Chris O'Donnell) learning how to conduct their interviews and then practicing what they’ve learned, the interviewees themselves, notably a man who is astonished when one of the surveyors seems to guess that he has had sex with horses, and an especially gripping one in which Kinsey interviews his strait-laced father (John Lithgow) about his own sex life. (Another best-supporting-actor performance.)
But the interviewers and interviewees are more than mere talking heads; they are real people, particularly Kinsey, his three assistants, his wife (Laura Linney), and his father. When the elder Kinsey talks about his own past, you understand why he turned out to be such an unfeeling authoritarian…and why Kinsey himself felt compelled to shine a light into all the dark corners.
One of those dark corners is in his own psyche. One of his assistants (Sarsgaard) realizes that his mentor is bisexual (a three on his own sexuality scale of one to ten) and lovingly brings him out of his closet.
Kinsey encourages Sarsgaard and Hutton to have sex with each other’s wives, partly in the interests of science (one assumes). Sarsgaard is okay with bedding down his colleague’s wife but becomes unscientifically jealous when the favor is returned. Sex is more than just bodily functions; it is an emotional experience as well. In his autobiography, Mark Twain sums things up this way:
Life does not consist mainly—or even largely—of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.
I’m not at all surprised that Condon has turned his movie into more than a dry docudrama (although it is highly enlightening) or a turn-on flick (although there are moments…). In Gods and Monsters, which he also wrote and directed, he made the life of homosexual film director James Whales, who directed the first Frankenstein movie as well as The Bride of Frankenstein, more than a study of a dirty old man (Ian McKellen) trying to get into the pants of his beautiful young heterosexual gardener (Brendan Fraser).
Redgrave shines here as well. Her performance is a gallery of acting triumphs in Condon’s latest film. I was also taken with Linney. Although she has relatively little dialogue, she manages to make her heart and mind transparent through her eyes.
In “Two Loves,” Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde’s lover, refers to homosexuality as “the love that dare not speak its name.” For better or worse, Alfred Kinsey gave all love permission to speak more than just its name. Sometimes you can’t help wishing it’d just shut up and get on with getting it on.
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William Sternman's short stories have been published in England, Hungary, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, as well as the U.S. His book and movie reviews have appeared in Audience, Films in Review, Bestsellers, The Drummer, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Houston Chronicle, The Boston Herald, The St. Petersburg Times and www.movie-vault.com. He has been a volunteer tutor at the Center for Literacy since 1998. He received a fellowship grant in literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
©
2005 Me Three