Kinsey

Produced by Gail Mutrux

Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Chris O’Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Dylan Baker.

Opening in black-and-white, Liam Neeson’s voice as Dr Alfred Kinsey instructs one of his young research assistants, Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), in interview techniques, with himself, Kinsey as the subject. As a cinematic device it’s an apt window into Kinsey’s suppressed boyhood under the thunderous hellfire-and-damnation domination of his father.  The questions are intimate: “At what age did you start masturbating?”  “When did you have your first wet dream?” “When did you first have intercourse?” - with Kinsey correcting the interviewers’ tone or body language wherever they veer even slightly into the judgmental and away from scientific matter-of-fact blandness. At another time his corrections are towards a more human approach, demonstrating an open, interested manner to put the subject at ease along with complete acceptance and non-reactivity to answers which might normally shock, amuse or horrify the questioner, in order to encourage responses which might never have been dared to be spoken out loud before. Such questioning techniques are still taught to research interviewers today.

As Kinsey answers the questions put to him, the reminiscences are shown in colour. As a continuing metaphor for the whole film it’s a device which shows historically both the necessarily standard form of interview as well as the richness of the data gained. Specifically, Kinsey’s responses keyhole his own harrowingly punitive childhood, which taught the young man to be secretive and determinedly rebellious. The interview techniques themselves also mirror the tremendous curiosity and open-mindedness of a man who was a painstaking scientist, a complex human being and an agent for social change long after his death in 1956, even though he himself is hardly known.  This film goes a long way to correct that, with Liam Neeson’s considerable depth and skill bringing to life a man of enthusiasm, immensely broad social vision and remarkable courage. No less is Laura Linney’s bright-eyed depiction of his free-thinking wife Clara 'Mac' McMillan , who not only matches her husband in revolutionary social theories, but who also brings the unquantifiable dimension of love to her measurement-obsessed scientist husband.

As a young man, curiosity and absorbed joy in observing behaviour was awakened by an early love of nature and long hours spent sketching wild creatures in their natural habitats. Long before sex became his life’s defining study, Kinsey, an enthusiastic, wild haired, bow-tied Professor nicknamed Prok by his students, was renowned as a zoologist and biologist whose meticulous observation of a staggering one million gall wasps found that no two of these insects is identical. Perhaps predictably, one of his colleagues, Thurman Rice (Tim Curry), who found Kinsey’s textbooks on the subject to be too academically dry and boring to read, was not alone in finding Kinsey's new preoccupation with human sexuality to be so mind-bogglingly alarming that his aversion to Kinsey simply took a stronger, and more moralistic turn.

Aptly demonstrating that necessity is the mother of invention, the film shows Prok’s clumsy, painful, first attempt at love-making with his new wife Mac  bringing to light a problem for which, as a scientist, he is sure there must be some expert with the knowledge for a solution. Luckily, a simple solution is found with an admirably blunt and clinical doctor. In his zoology course at Indiana University, however, students coming to him with their own sexual problems highlight an abysmal lack of factual knowledge available. Soon, Kinsey is teaching a ‘Marriage Course’ which is hugely popular with students and which not only presents many-times larger than life-size slides of human genitalia in sexual congress but also addresses the universal human concern, “Am I normal?” with the disarmingly frank reply, “We don’t know. Kindly answer this questionnaire honestly, so we can find out.” Like gall wasps, no two human beings are exactly alike. The ensuing evolution of Kinsey’s famous face-to-face interview techniques is clearly seen - some thousands of interviews later being presented in the largest collection of factual research on sexual behaviour ever undertaken in his 1948 book Sexual Behaviour of the Human Male. 

With gentle, understated humour showing both the inhibitions and discomfort as well as the openness of the individuals concerned, the film documents the kind of intimate social network Kinsey, his family and his researchers and their wives construct as a kind of utopian precursor to the free-sex and open marriages attempted in the decades since, but with particular bravado in the sixties.  The pitfalls of love vs sex are also explored, with some consternation when these scientists, including Prok, are caught unexpectedly by emotion and their own socially conditioned double standards. Performances by Peter Sarsgaard, Chris O'Donnell and Timothy Hutton as the researchers are solidly convincing of the era and of both the human and the scientific import of the work in which they were involved.

"If something prohibited is strongly desired," Prok lectures, "it becomes obsessional. Think about it." The shoals of morality, myths and distorted facts and their influencing effect on human behaviour are shown to have some heartbreaking consequences in some of Prok's interviews.

While his first book on male sexuality was hailed enthusiastically, by and large, it was a wholly different matter when his 1953 book on female sexuality challenged the notion of purity and wholesomeness in American wives and mothers. The forces of sexual repression and moralistic outrage came out in furious indignation at the notion that women and girls masturbate and have healthy sexual appetites. But while the Victorian legacy is heavily and ironically evident, the freedom afforded thousands of people finally able to talk about their most intimate experiences and secrets is shown as an explosion of cathartic relief registering just how oppressive moralist values are.

The inspired support of the Indiana University President, Herman Wells (a genial Oliver Platt) allows Kinsey’s work to continue, as does the Rockefeller Foundation for a time – until McCarthyist accusations that the sexual awakenings caused by Kinsey’s research are undermining American youth and therefore must be a Communist plot - force that particular source of funding to dry up.

Three scenes above all define the true measure of writer/director Bill Condon’s achievement in this film. One features John Lithgow in one of the most powerful roles of his career as Kinsey’s aged, still oppressive father after his mother’s funeral, when Kinsey astoundingly gets him to agree to a sex history interview. There is a long, electrifying moment when the older Kinsey reveals a secret from his own boyhood, and Liam Neeson’s face as Prok registers his compassion and final absolute understanding of his father. This is pure magic, and not lessened by the older Kinsey’s trying to recover his usual gruff manner after the moment of intimacy by saying, “Sounds to me like you’re wasting your time. No-one wants to know about these things.”

In the last black-and-white interview, a researcher asks why there has been no mention of love in all his observations. Kinsey says it’s because love cannot be measured and is therefore not accessible to science. It is in the giant Sequoia woods with Mac, with just a touch of his hand, that Kinsey reveals to her how deeply and exuberantly he still loves her after 35 years of marriage.

Heart disease and opposition to his next project – interviews with sexual deviants and convicted sex offenders – take their toll and Kinsey is all but convinced his life’s work has been wasted. Before he dies, a third riveting scene with a woman who is his final interview subject, this time in colour and played by a luminously lovely Lynn Redgrave, shows him the truly liberating effect he has had on the lives of ordinary people.

It's a rich, extraordinary film about extraordinary people. The historical and political background is shown peripherally and in  newspapers and television and does not overly intrude. What emerges most engagingly is the feeling of knowing Kinsey and his wife and their team of researchers, as well as what his work entailed, its social context and its legacy.  We may feel we have a deeper understanding of human nature in general as a result, and even more freedom to be human - which was, after all, just what Alfred Kinsey was about.

Lastly, the buoyant spirit of the film is shown in original  Kinsey Institute archive film footage of mating animals, in jerky black-and-white behind the final credits, backed by a rendition of, what else? - the song 'Fever'.

Copyright  ©  Avril Carruthers, 15th December 2004

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