Kinsey (2004)

Director: Bill Condon                                      Writer: Bill Condon
Film Score: Carter Burwell                              Cinematography: Frederick Elmes
Starring: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Oliver Platt and Peter Sarsgaard

This film stars two of my all time favorite actors, Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, and yet it is still a difficult film to watch. I guess that only goes to show that our puritan heritage is still doggedly hanging on even fifty years after the Kinsey Report. Kinsey is a fascinating study of a man who grew up repressed, then went on to have a successful career as a college professor studying biology, and yet not understanding his own. Professor Alfred Kinsey, Prok as he was called by students as well as friends, was an unlikely man to document sexual practices in the United States, but in doing so he shed light on a hidden facet of society that had been causing untold grief to people for centuries.

Kinsey’s early life was dominated by his father--John Lithgow in a role similar to the one he played in Footloose--a preacher who believed that sex was not only sinful but a pathway to evil. His inhibitions caused him to be celibate until he was married. Laura Linney plays his wife and partner and after a devastating wedding night, he makes it his mission to find out what he was doing wrong. This changed the course of his life. Clearly, millions of people in the country were suffering similarly from either a lack of information or, sometimes worse, misinformation. He attacked the problem the way he did his research into wasps, wrote two books on his findings, and wound up opening the eyes of the country to the reality of sex.

The strangest part of the film is also something that winds up being disappointing. It is the way Kinsey’s own experimentation winds up being something that is less about pleasure and experience and more about an obsession to try everything just for the sake of doing it. That is what makes it difficult to watch. With a decreasing amount of joy that he derives from his work, and the pain it causes his family, and his obsession to finish his second book before he dies . . . it’s not a pleasant story. Neeson, of course, is one of the greats and he does an exceptional job of making us see the anguish in Kinsey’s life. Laura Linney, who is my favorite modern actress, was nominated for an Oscar that year and really should have beat out Cate Blanchett in The Aviator. She goes from college co-ed in Neeson’s class to becoming his wife and growing old with him and is absolutely wonderful.

But the other performances are equally good. Peter Sarsgaard plays Kinsey’s most trusted assistant, and both he and his wife wind up having a sexual relationship with him. His other two assistants are played by Timothy Hutton and Chris O’Donnell, and they both do exceptional jobs as well. The only part that was somehow disappointing was the university president played by Oliver Platt. Platt has had a rollercoaster career with some excellent roles and some real duds. After becoming so familiar with him through Laura Linney’s excellent sit-com The Big C, he’s hard to take seriously in a serious role. Kinsey is not a titillating film, which is appropriate as the man’s work was never intended to be that. Kinsey opened a window on a world that had blinded itself to it’s own workings and was shocked by what it saw. The film is ultimately about a man who achieved success by trying to help others at a tremendous personal cost to himself.