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114 of 135 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A preoccupation with sex, November 3, 2004
KINSEY is the story of Alfred Kinsey, here played by Liam Neeson, the author of "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953), both of which raised, um, eyebrows.
As the film succinctly shows, Alfred, the son of a puritanical minister that went so far as to rail against zippers for giving idle hands easy access to occasions for sin, grew up to be a zoologist whose obsession with collecting and studying the gall wasp gained him a measure of obscurity. However, after marrying Clara McMillen (Laura Linney), with whom he achieved sexual liberation after sorting out a few physical impediments with the help of a knowledgeable physician, Kinsey achieved local notoriety at Indiana University by teaching an enlightened and graphic sex education course for students and staff. It was there that he first utilized questionnaires to elicit personal sexual histories, the methodology, administered by trained interviewers, that he later used in the thousands across the nation to build the database for his two books. In KINSEY, we also see depicted the Kinsey couple's unconventional sexual relationship, as well as those of Alfred's cadre of interviewers and their wives. Hugh Hefner would've been proud to have the investigative team over to his mansion for a frolic.
Insofar as it goes, KINSEY appears to give a reasonably accurate summary of the sex researcher's bio. I base this conclusion on my own sketchy knowledge of the subject, hastily gleaned from a website. The film does skip over a couple of minor points. It doesn't share that Alfred was an atheist who thought Judeo-Christian sexual ethics repressive. It also seamlessly transitions from Kinsey's sex-ed class at IU into his larger national study without revealing that he was replaced as the class instructor because his lecture content was too racy for the times. In any case, Neeson's performance is certainly worth an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, and perhaps Linney for Best Actress also.
Perhaps hoping to be on the cutting edge of sexual expression, as were Kinsey's two books, KINSEY has two brief shots of full-frontal male nudity (involving supporting actor Peter Sarsgaard), something not often seen in American theatres in mainstream releases. Kinsey would be pleased.
KINSEY is a finely crafted, entertaining, and instructive look at a simpler time and place before AIDS and HIV became parts of the sexual equation.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Surprising Love Story, March 15, 2009
I was prepared to have my negative feelings about Kinsey confirmed in this movie. I'd heard that he took a cold accounting approach to his sex studies, that he had basically been a taxonomist/entomologist who had transferred his skills at categorizing and dissecting insects (specifically gall wasps) to tallying human behavior. But this movie introduced me to someone a lot more sympathetic, innocent, and complicated than that. It introduced me to someone never quite in on the joke.
The film does inform viewers about Kinsey's working methods and the dynamics of his relationship with the graduate students he recruited to help with the burgeoning workload as he sought to interview a huge cross-section of the American population about their sexual habits and preferences. It shows how he attempted to train his associates in impassive objectivity, so as not to frighten any of their interview subjects into falsifications.
I would like to have learned more about how Kinsey translated the sometimes almost stream-of-consciousness reflections he elicited from study subjects (including one particularly repulsive, absolutely unrepentant pedophile) - into the crisp numeric tallies on his sheets of paper. But perhaps such details of his study are best left to documentaries about his life.
This movie wasn't meant to be a documentary. It was meant to provide some emotional insight into the man himself. The heart of the movie is his relationship with his wife, and the heart of that relationship is Laura Linney's portrayal of Clara. They had an unconventional romance from the start. One of the most touching scenes shows Kinsey celebrating Clara by giving her a clumpy pair of walking shoes. She greets these with sincere pleasure. She shines in anticipation of all the places they can tramp together, with her in such a "sensible" pair of shoes.
The movie proceeds to take us through some of the ups and downs of their open marriage. Kinsey is a pioneer in equality, wondering why his wife isn't getting as much pleasure out of their sexual relationship as he is - a question few husbands in that era would even think to ask. He sets out to investigate the process of pleasure scientifically and to set things right. As their marriage matures, Kinsey has his affairs - with both men and women. Then when Clara decides she might like to try an outside adventure on her own - the play of subtle emotions on the actors' faces tells a story in itself.
Those shoes come to represent their relationship throughout their lives - through their accommodations with each other, through their estrangements, through their essential affection for each other. In the end, as in the beginning, they enjoy their explorations together, in sensible shoes.
This movie will take you in unexpected directions.
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17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good bio-pic that ignores the most interesting questions, June 23, 2005
When "Kinsey" was released, I entered the theater eagerly, expecting a detailed and thorough look at the man and his work; I left the theater disappointed, and that disappointment grew the more I thought back on the film. "Kinsey" does indeed provide a detailed and thorough look at Alfred Kinsey, but the movie's treatment of his work and its impact is very narrow. The filmmakers never quite get to the really interesting questions.
"Kinsey" tells the story of Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson), author of "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male." The film follows Kinsey's life from his early years as a zoologist and his marriage to his wife Clara (Laura Linney), through his groundbreaking work in the study of human sexuality and the effects of and reactions to that work.
As a straight bio-pic, "Kinsey" does a good job. However, it is hard to miss the fact that the implications of his work are largely ignored, and when the subject is raised, the movie quickly glosses it over. For instance, Kinsey appears to argue that sex and emotion can and should be thought of as unrelated (or at least not necessarily related), and he follows this principle in his own life. In the larger scale, this sentiment figured largely in the American sexual revolution, and continues to a vital part of current attitudes towards sex. Yet this aspect of Kinsey's work is addressed for only the briefest of moments. At one point, Clara--initially upset by the notion that sex and love can be divorced from one another--asks Kinsey, "But what about love?" This is by far the most compelling question the movie asks, yet the plot quickly moves past it, leaving it as merely a device to further the development of Kinsey and Clara's relationship.
The implications of Kinsey's work are not entirely ignored by the movie, and the filmmakers do a good job of addressing the impact on homosexuality and its perception. But ultimately, "Kinsey" deeply disappointed me. Although Kinsey's studies furthered our understanding of human sexuality, the subject still remains quite mysterious, and the filmmakers squandered a wonderful chance to probe its depths.
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