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Kinsey (12-Nov-2004)
Director: Bill Condon Writer: Bill Condon Keywords: Drama, Biography, Controversial Film about the life of Alfred Kinsey.
Official Website:
http://www.foxsearchlight.com/kinsey/
REVIEWS Featured review by Mark Tapio Kines: Alas, not a movie about yours truly -- that would be called Kinesy -- this is the well-meaning if occasionally corny biography of Alfred Kinsey, the influential Indiana State University professor whose post-World War II interviews with ordinary Americans about their sexual practices blew apart countless old fashioned notions about sex in this country, and arguably opened the door to the Sexual Revolution of the 1960's. I went to this film with expectations that were, perhaps, too high. I felt a film about this man and his work could, if done right, encourage discussion and debate amongst current moviegoers about sex; for in today's America, as always, sex is something that everybody always thinks about but nobody ever talks about. So instead of learning more about each other, we have to settle with sensationalistic reports of celebrities' dalliances. Sad. Now, I'm as fascinated about people's sex lives as the next guy, but even amongst my closest friends, for all that we talk about, I know nothing about their sex lives. So let me take a moment and invite all those reading this review to contact me and tell me your stories. And I promise I'll share alike.
But we were talking about Kinsey. If I was disappointed in the film, it was not only by its surprisingly Hollywood sentiment (Alfred Kinsey was, if nothing else, totally unsentimental -- and to be fair, Bill Condon writes his character, and Liam Neeson enacts it, truthfully, showing a Kinsey who was monomaniacally devoted to his work, to the exclusion of any talk of love, morals or consequences) but by its overly ambitious drive to cram in every detail possible about Kinsey's life. This is a standard problem with most biopics. While Condon and his cast are open about exploring issues of the characters' sexuality -- indeed, it would be criminal to make a film about the world's foremost sex researcher while ignoring his own sex life -- the most interesting scenes, such as when we see Kinsey and his "unquestionably moral" team of researchers (Chris O'Donnell, Timothy Hutton and a typically great Peter Sarsgaard) become shall we say personally involved in their research (with their subjects, with each other's wives, and even, sometimes, with each other), are never fully examined, since Condon has to rush off to give his next history lesson. This is a consistent let-down: There seems to be exactly one scene dealing with each aspect of Kinsey's life, and just as it starts to become something more than just a biopic, the story moves on. It's all the more frustrating because this is a well-made, entertaining and genuinely brave film. As a Hollywood filmmaker, Condon takes risks so assuredly that he clearly had a chance to explore deeper issues about sexuality and ethics, but he blew it, because he was too set on making a biopic. What might have worked beautifully would have been an approach similar to the great 1999 Japanese drama After Life. In that film, a number of the newly-dead are asked which one memory from their lives they would choose to take with them to Heaven. The cast of mostly non-actors start sharing their real memories, and the film plays out these interviews against the deepening story of the case workers assigned to these newly-dead. Kinsey could have been remarkable if the film simply consisted of Kinsey's interviews, contrasted with the man and his staff themselves, giving us a portrait of the complicated nature of sex, science, even the human condition, rather than wasting time showing Kinsey begging for money for his research. Instead, stretching for a cohesive storyline, Condon places it on Kinsey's glum relationship with his puritan father (played by John Lithgow with an almost cartoonish animosity towards his son). Ho-hum. I thought we were finally beyond the old "Blame the Screwed-up Parent" approach to explaining a character's psychology. Talk about old fashioned!
Locate a copy of this film here.
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