Review -- Kinsey
Kinsey (2004)
Director: Bill Condon
Starring: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard
Canadian Rating: 18A
3.5 stars out of 4 (Very Good)
By Albert Tam
Do you remember how squeamish you felt during your first sex education class? Everything changed, from your perception of the opposite sex to how you came about your own existence.
Kinsey is just like a first sex education class because it is unflinchingly direct and informative on gender roles as well as the life of the doctor who studied it all, Dr. Alfred Kinsey.
Liam Neeson is the famed doctor and the film covers his personal life as well as the controversy of his studies, right from his humble beginnings with insects to his up and down relationship, both literally and thematically, with his wife played by Laura Linney.
What I particularly enjoyed about Kinsey was how the biopic treated its protagonist. This is not a simple story of: man gains success, man goes through trouble, man temporarily loses success, man gains respect at end; it was much more than that.
Instead the audience is presented with a seemingly innocent young man with an obsession with gall wasps and then that innocence and youth slowly becomes stripped from him without his knowledge as he begins to focus on the studies concerning sex. At times his studies are quite funny and representational while other times we feel uncomfortable at the extent in which this man is willing to go to fulfill a graph appropriately. The film doesn’t force pity or sympathy at any point, but we sometimes feel and see the controversy of his studies.
The actors of this film are well-cast and while I had a hard time grasping Liam Neeson as a nerdy college-boy at the beginning, his performance eventually becomes an embodiment. There isn’t a hint of Neeson by the 20 minute mark and we see him as a scientist that views the entire world with a stark objectivity. In one scene, one of his frustrated associates asks if they mean anything to him or are just part of a greater experiment. We’d like to think Kinsey thought of them as helping hands, but there’s something in Neeson’s performance and in us that makes us think otherwise.
I won’t deny that Kinsey is a very good, sometimes very funny, and very educational film. This is a man that didn’t only defy a generation, but centuries of science with his studies on sex, studies that we use today in our education systems.
Dr. Alfred Kinsey essentially recorded what people did at the time and published it when nobody else dared to. For himself and for the people of the 1940s every sperm wasn’t sacred, homosexuality was not odd, and deviating from the missionary position certainly wouldn’t send anyone to hell.
Nowadays, this all sounds like common sense. Don’t thank me for stating it matter-of-factly, thank Kinsey.
Director: Bill Condon
Starring: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard
Canadian Rating: 18A
3.5 stars out of 4 (Very Good)
By Albert Tam
Do you remember how squeamish you felt during your first sex education class? Everything changed, from your perception of the opposite sex to how you came about your own existence.
Kinsey is just like a first sex education class because it is unflinchingly direct and informative on gender roles as well as the life of the doctor who studied it all, Dr. Alfred Kinsey.
Liam Neeson is the famed doctor and the film covers his personal life as well as the controversy of his studies, right from his humble beginnings with insects to his up and down relationship, both literally and thematically, with his wife played by Laura Linney.
What I particularly enjoyed about Kinsey was how the biopic treated its protagonist. This is not a simple story of: man gains success, man goes through trouble, man temporarily loses success, man gains respect at end; it was much more than that.
Instead the audience is presented with a seemingly innocent young man with an obsession with gall wasps and then that innocence and youth slowly becomes stripped from him without his knowledge as he begins to focus on the studies concerning sex. At times his studies are quite funny and representational while other times we feel uncomfortable at the extent in which this man is willing to go to fulfill a graph appropriately. The film doesn’t force pity or sympathy at any point, but we sometimes feel and see the controversy of his studies.
The actors of this film are well-cast and while I had a hard time grasping Liam Neeson as a nerdy college-boy at the beginning, his performance eventually becomes an embodiment. There isn’t a hint of Neeson by the 20 minute mark and we see him as a scientist that views the entire world with a stark objectivity. In one scene, one of his frustrated associates asks if they mean anything to him or are just part of a greater experiment. We’d like to think Kinsey thought of them as helping hands, but there’s something in Neeson’s performance and in us that makes us think otherwise.
I won’t deny that Kinsey is a very good, sometimes very funny, and very educational film. This is a man that didn’t only defy a generation, but centuries of science with his studies on sex, studies that we use today in our education systems.
Dr. Alfred Kinsey essentially recorded what people did at the time and published it when nobody else dared to. For himself and for the people of the 1940s every sperm wasn’t sacred, homosexuality was not odd, and deviating from the missionary position certainly wouldn’t send anyone to hell.
Nowadays, this all sounds like common sense. Don’t thank me for stating it matter-of-factly, thank Kinsey.