Kinsey

by Rick Curnutte

Richard A. Curnutte, Jr. is the Editor of The Film Journal. He has studied English and Film at Ohio University and The Ohio State University. He is a founding member of the Central Ohio Film Critics Association and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

Professor Alfred Kinsey was a revolutionary analytical thinker. Far ahead of his time, Kinsey began a social, political, cultural and moral discourse on human sexuality that truly revolutionized the way Americans thought about their own, and their neighbors’, sex lives (whether or not they wanted to or not).

Bill Condon’s latest film is an unusual entry in the annals of this type of film: a film about one of the most controversial figures of the past century that has absolutely no cinematic spark or vision for framing the implications of what Dr. Kinsey accomplished. Kinsey is, for all intents and purposes, all content and no context.

Liam Neeson does an admirable job of trying to place Kinsey into some sort of emotional perspective. His Kinsey, large and imposing (in more ways than one, it seems), is a walking experiment: a man who thinks only in scientific terms. Indeed, Kinsey’s research into human sexuality was devoid of all emotional content. Kinsey believed there was no way to stage the study without removing everything but the basic, primal biological aspects of the act itself.

Kinsey presents all of this, though, in a rather pedestrian way. Sure, we see the difficulty that Kinsey has getting his study started, in getting it recognized, in maintaining his own scientific credibility in the face of indignant moral outrage. But Condon’s film never adequately shows us what might have really been interesting: how his study affected those who were his subjects. With the exception of a sole testimonial at the film’s end (a tragic misstep of a cameo by Lynn Redgrave), Kinsey doesn’t present us with how those who participated in the studies reacted to, and were affected by, the science they partook of.

It’s surprising, really, that Kinsey is so docile, after Condon’s wickedly insightful Gods and Monsters . What he gave that film, namely a human center, is painfully lacking in Kinsey .

I think that, perhaps, Condon felt he might be berated for making the film about a scientist into something more risqué or flamboyant. Actually, though, I believe the purity of Kinsey’s science may have shown through even brighter if the human, reactionary side of the results of his study had been portrayed as well.

I give the filmmakers kudos for wanting to bring Kinsey and his work back into the public eye after all these years, but I think it’s a shame they wasted such an ample opportunity to really show the world how Kinsey opened up our public AND private sexual discourse into something worth fighting for.