Sex & Love, Actually
Writer and director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters) gives Liam Neeson his best role to date in the story of a Harvard-bred zoologist whose historic research made sex safe for scholarly study. In Kinsey, the physically powerful Mr. Neeson plays Alfred Kinsey as a vigorous, intransigent intellectual moved by science, a man whose work liberated repressed, lonely souls in an era of ignorance about sex.
Choosing a simple, deliberate style, Condon's bow-tied Kinsey explores reason, love and sex, and whether there's any connection, through episodes that fit like pieces of a philosophical puzzle. That Kinsey is the foremost beneficiary of his own ideas sets the movie's personal tone.
As a boy, Kinsey is eager to explore, yearning to know what happens—between insects, between animals, between men. Burdened by his father's lectures—with John Lithgow playing the antithesis of his World According to Garp transvestite—the tormented Kinsey tries to mimic his father's notion that sex is evil. During one of his dad's religious rants, Kinsey chooses to think for himself, prompting an act of defiance that earns his father's lifelong contempt.
Hired by Indiana University, Kinsey studies the gall wasp, struck that no two are alike. While explaining the advantages of biological diversity, he catches the eye of a plain-looking graduate student (Laura Linney) who shares his passion for knowledge. Early in their relationship, she watches from the shadows in unspoken admiration for his focused mind, while the biology professor meticulously records his data. Their love burns bright and it gives Kinsey a steady glow of reverence for rationality.
Kinsey's interest in human sexuality is sparked by his students, which leads to the personal interviews that became the basis for his groundbreaking Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. The report becomes a publishing phenomenon—unheard of for an academic study—and it unleashes pent-up demand for information about sex, making Kinsey a household name. When he produces a companion study of females, the backlash begins. It is 1953 and everything from masturbation to menstruation is either condemned or misunderstood. As Mrs. Kinsey asks her frustrated husband: "What did you expect?"
He remains single-minded in his view that sex ought to be examined, an obsession which Kinsey dramatizes in sumptuous detail. Whether scribbling a numerical sex scale—on which he rates his own homosexual tendency—on a memo pad after visiting a gay bar or facing a pedophile who distorts his ideas, the professor acts on principle.
Condon uses color gradation, capsule interviews and Carter Burwell's understated score to mark Kinsey's progress and measure the scope of his influence. Lacking a consistent philosophy of sex, Kinsey makes mistakes and Condon shows them, too, but he presents Kinsey's life in essential terms, portraying one man's dedication to his work as a triumph, not a tragedy. Barely a frame of his movie doesn't have direct bearing on Kinsey.
Besides Linney as sturdy Mrs. Kinsey, an exceptional cast matches Mr. Neeson, whose act as the spiky-haired sex researcher is the year's best by a mile. Timothy Hutton, Chris O'Donnell and Peter Sarsgaard punctuate their mentor's progression—each in memorable ways—as his researchers, and Oliver Platt and Tim Curry both shine in difficult roles.
They are all like clay in Condon's hands. The result is a drama about America—on the eve of contraception, Playboy and Donahue—that honors man's capacity to think. Because he portrays the pursuit of knowledge as a noble cause and he telescopes it into a single human life, Condon's idealized Kinsey is something of a masterpiece.
DVD Notes
The best picture of 2004 deserves a discriminating DVD premiere and Fox generally delivers. For a suggested retail price of $34.98, the snap encased, two-disc Kinsey includes thoughtful commentary by writer and director Bill Condon, 20 deleted scenes with commentary, a gag reel, a documentary about the Kinsey reports, a visit to the Kinsey Institute and a sex questionnaire to make sure the viewer is paying attention. The score assesses one's excitability and one's inhibitions according to recent sex research.
The gag reel is funny—especially Timothy Hutton—as the cast lets off steam during what must have been an intense production. Deleted scenes reinforce the fine editing here and Condon's adroit sense of storytelling. The Kinsey Institute piece, which is explicitly sexual, is illuminating, with a brief tour of archived items including an old book titled How to Cure Self-Abuse (referring to masturbation), a diagram of a device for women designed not to allow objects to enter the vagina—that no one can figure out—and a dildo somebody used as a doorstop. It is a hoot, though several wall hangings are blotched out without explanation. The documentary, The Kinsey Report: Sex on Film, is educational but dry.
Condon's commentary is the best value, offering a steady and thoughtful voice with facts about the movie's making. Lucille Ball's daughter, Luci, apparently refused to allow a Kinsey-oriented segment of The Lucy Show to be used—denouncing the sex researcher—the picture's ending contains a nod to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and budget restraints account for minor discrepancies, which Condon works around brilliantly.
Condon, who speaks in short, breathy halts and too often sounds like he's reading a thank you list, is best discussing his reasons for emphasizing a mother-son bond or deleting a scene for being too modern or why he was uncomfortable with Professor Kinsey's self-administered circumcision. His social commentary is less credible, as he wrongly defines censorship and comments favorably on communist China's funding of sex research, ignoring its slavery of a billion people. And it would have been nice to see the only footage of Kinsey—an interview with Arlene Francis—that everyone keeps talking about. But there is beauty and joy in what Condon calls simple, real and powerful—and, in each aspect, including the main menu's searching musical sample from composer Carter Burwell's uplifting score, there is the movie's reverence for the subject of sex.
Choosing a simple, deliberate style, Condon's bow-tied Kinsey explores reason, love and sex, and whether there's any connection, through episodes that fit like pieces of a philosophical puzzle. That Kinsey is the foremost beneficiary of his own ideas sets the movie's personal tone.
As a boy, Kinsey is eager to explore, yearning to know what happens—between insects, between animals, between men. Burdened by his father's lectures—with John Lithgow playing the antithesis of his World According to Garp transvestite—the tormented Kinsey tries to mimic his father's notion that sex is evil. During one of his dad's religious rants, Kinsey chooses to think for himself, prompting an act of defiance that earns his father's lifelong contempt.
Hired by Indiana University, Kinsey studies the gall wasp, struck that no two are alike. While explaining the advantages of biological diversity, he catches the eye of a plain-looking graduate student (Laura Linney) who shares his passion for knowledge. Early in their relationship, she watches from the shadows in unspoken admiration for his focused mind, while the biology professor meticulously records his data. Their love burns bright and it gives Kinsey a steady glow of reverence for rationality.
Kinsey's interest in human sexuality is sparked by his students, which leads to the personal interviews that became the basis for his groundbreaking Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. The report becomes a publishing phenomenon—unheard of for an academic study—and it unleashes pent-up demand for information about sex, making Kinsey a household name. When he produces a companion study of females, the backlash begins. It is 1953 and everything from masturbation to menstruation is either condemned or misunderstood. As Mrs. Kinsey asks her frustrated husband: "What did you expect?"
He remains single-minded in his view that sex ought to be examined, an obsession which Kinsey dramatizes in sumptuous detail. Whether scribbling a numerical sex scale—on which he rates his own homosexual tendency—on a memo pad after visiting a gay bar or facing a pedophile who distorts his ideas, the professor acts on principle.
Condon uses color gradation, capsule interviews and Carter Burwell's understated score to mark Kinsey's progress and measure the scope of his influence. Lacking a consistent philosophy of sex, Kinsey makes mistakes and Condon shows them, too, but he presents Kinsey's life in essential terms, portraying one man's dedication to his work as a triumph, not a tragedy. Barely a frame of his movie doesn't have direct bearing on Kinsey.
Besides Linney as sturdy Mrs. Kinsey, an exceptional cast matches Mr. Neeson, whose act as the spiky-haired sex researcher is the year's best by a mile. Timothy Hutton, Chris O'Donnell and Peter Sarsgaard punctuate their mentor's progression—each in memorable ways—as his researchers, and Oliver Platt and Tim Curry both shine in difficult roles.
They are all like clay in Condon's hands. The result is a drama about America—on the eve of contraception, Playboy and Donahue—that honors man's capacity to think. Because he portrays the pursuit of knowledge as a noble cause and he telescopes it into a single human life, Condon's idealized Kinsey is something of a masterpiece.
DVD Notes
The best picture of 2004 deserves a discriminating DVD premiere and Fox generally delivers. For a suggested retail price of $34.98, the snap encased, two-disc Kinsey includes thoughtful commentary by writer and director Bill Condon, 20 deleted scenes with commentary, a gag reel, a documentary about the Kinsey reports, a visit to the Kinsey Institute and a sex questionnaire to make sure the viewer is paying attention. The score assesses one's excitability and one's inhibitions according to recent sex research.
The gag reel is funny—especially Timothy Hutton—as the cast lets off steam during what must have been an intense production. Deleted scenes reinforce the fine editing here and Condon's adroit sense of storytelling. The Kinsey Institute piece, which is explicitly sexual, is illuminating, with a brief tour of archived items including an old book titled How to Cure Self-Abuse (referring to masturbation), a diagram of a device for women designed not to allow objects to enter the vagina—that no one can figure out—and a dildo somebody used as a doorstop. It is a hoot, though several wall hangings are blotched out without explanation. The documentary, The Kinsey Report: Sex on Film, is educational but dry.
Condon's commentary is the best value, offering a steady and thoughtful voice with facts about the movie's making. Lucille Ball's daughter, Luci, apparently refused to allow a Kinsey-oriented segment of The Lucy Show to be used—denouncing the sex researcher—the picture's ending contains a nod to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and budget restraints account for minor discrepancies, which Condon works around brilliantly.
Condon, who speaks in short, breathy halts and too often sounds like he's reading a thank you list, is best discussing his reasons for emphasizing a mother-son bond or deleting a scene for being too modern or why he was uncomfortable with Professor Kinsey's self-administered circumcision. His social commentary is less credible, as he wrongly defines censorship and comments favorably on communist China's funding of sex research, ignoring its slavery of a billion people. And it would have been nice to see the only footage of Kinsey—an interview with Arlene Francis—that everyone keeps talking about. But there is beauty and joy in what Condon calls simple, real and powerful—and, in each aspect, including the main menu's searching musical sample from composer Carter Burwell's uplifting score, there is the movie's reverence for the subject of sex.
