Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I’ve got reviews of both this and THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES coming in the next few, as soon as I’m done with the FANTASTIC FOUR piece I’ve been promising and this week’s DVD column, but I’ll say this much: the early raves you’re hearing for this film are no anomaly. It’s not just one or two people who seem to be digging it. Roger Ebert, Ty Burr, Todd McCarthy from VARIETY... they all flipped for it at Telluride. And now, with the film headed to the Toronto Film Festival, even more people are going to get an early peek at it, and I think you’ll hear more of the same.
For today, I’m going to let Mr. Beaks fill you in on just why KINSEY matters, and what to expect when Fox Searchlight opens this one on November 12th...
KINSEY (w. & d. Bill Condon)
In this year of great “importance”, where “important” films stream into the marketplace almost weekly, seeking to shake up public opinion and steer the voting majority toward a vast, collective enlightenment, it’s no longer enough for a filmmaker to simply show up armed with the truth. Too much preaching, and the populace deems them shrill and backs away; too much rage, and they’re written off as mentally imbalanced.
Moderation, then, becomes crucial, and it’s the most telling characteristic of Bill Condon’s striking, controlled, and deeply affecting KINSEY. Navigating the many pitfalls that normally render the biopic a thudding, studious bore, Condon has pieced together a sympathetic portrait of the complex and still controversial sexologist Alfred Kinsey, who destroyed a nation’s ignorant notions about sexuality with the publication of his SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE HUMAN MALE, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of his own (unjustifiably) ignoble downfall at the hands of outraged academics and religious fanatics. Because Kinsey’s findings remain largely antithetical to the beliefs of certain strict (and well-funded) Christian Right organizations and their inveighing, microphoned mouthpieces, one expects that the film will be subject to the same cannily organized charges that have sought to invalidate his findings ever since the first study was made public in 1948. But Condon’s careful, compassionate work will stand as its own loud refutation of such fact-challenged noise, for his is a film interested in opening minds rather than closing them. In this year of great “importance”, nothing could be more *essential*.
Most biopics stumble in the early going as they fumble with exposition – a problem Condon solves by presenting Kinsey’s childhood as part of a sex history. It’s an effective device through which the filmmaker is able to tersely depict the major influences that shaped Kinsey’s own sexuality; namely, his cruel, proscribing father (gruffly embodied by John Lithgow) and the Methodist faith that, at the time, preached against the evils of even the natural nocturnal discharge. Weary of his father’s bullying, which finds targets in local merchants selling cigarettes to underage youths and, most inexcusably, in Kinsey’s shy mother, whose belittlement is callous and unceasing, the young, knowledge-starved man flees his stifling home environment for academia, where his love for the outdoors leads to a consuming study of entomology. Upon securing a professor post at Indiana University, Kinsey tightens his focus to investigating the gall wasp, which would figure in the early development of his theories on human sexuality. It’s also during this period that Kinsey courts and marries the inquisitive and independent Clara (Laura Linney).
Free at last to engage in sex without sin, Kinsey and Clara discover that they are, painfully and quite literally, far from a perfect fit. Negotiating this difficulty and the general awkwardness instilled by a lifetime of silence on the subject, along with seeing other married couples struggle with similar difficulties, Kinsey convinces the university’s progressive President, Herman Wells (Oliver Platt), who would prove an invaluable advocate and defender of Kinsey’s future studies, to let him teach a marriage course aimed at educating the soon-to-be-betrothed on the ins-and-outs of copulation. Predictably, it proves wildly popular with students and objectionable to a number of rival faculty members; most notably, the sneering Thurman Rice (vividly realized by sneering emeritus Tim Curry).
Astounded and inspired by the utter lack of scientific study on the subject of human sexuality, Kinsey quickly commences his foray into this previously forbidden area of inquiry, enlisting the aid of numerous graduate students as he sets out to compile the sex histories first of local residents, then widening his net to incorporate the entire continental United States – a massive undertaking inventively depicted by Condon through a sprawling map of talking heads. This flurry of activity, made possible and streamlined by Kinsey’s list of 350 carefully chosen questions, builds to the contentious release of SEXUAL BEHAVIOR OF THE HUMAN MALE, which rockets the professor to international renown and infamy in equal measure.
Meanwhile, Kinsey’s investigations have a curious, nearly pernicious impact on his relationship with Clara, as his friendship with strapping young research assistant Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard) conflagrates into a full-on homosexual fling. Thus, Kinsey’s marriage will be the test case in withstanding the revolutionary power of his unconventional findings. And it survives by their honest and adult confrontation of their own desires, which, they realize, must be sated within reason; ergo, Clara takes a lover, too (that Kinsey seems relatively okay with the idea that her paramour of choice is Clyde is seems unusually… *tolerant* for a man).
Not everyone on the research team handles the free love atmosphere so gracefully, and the inflamed tempers have as much to do with bruised emotions as with the increasing pressure being placed upon their project. Indeed, as the film moves into the 1950’s, along comes the fear of communism and its most famous, fear fanning opportunist, Joe McCarthy, who, unsurprisingly, takes vociferous exception with Kinsey’s godless findings. Embattled after the publication of the second book, SEXUAL BEHAVIOR OF THE HUMAN FEMALE, which drew the nation’s ire for subjecting the fairer of the species to the same unremitting scrutiny as was trained on the men, Kinsey watches helplessly as his life is very swiftly rendered a shambles. He loses everything: his funding, the future of his studies and, finally, his health.
As the latter fails, Condon at last loosens up the emotional restraints, and the impact of Kinsey’s groundbreaking work hits the viewer all at once in the film’s penultimate scene, which proves particularly poignant in light of the ongoing attempt to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The disciplined, though hardly humorless tone of all that came before allows the sequence, featuring Lynn Redgrave as a lesbian who persevered thanks to Kinsey’s research, to feel fully earned; even better, it also stands as an irresistibly human refutation of the kind of intolerance that has dogged Kinsey’s studies since his death in 1956. This dovetailing of the scholarly and the impassioned is Condon’s final, finest triumph, marking a maturation of his craft that perhaps could not be glimpsed from the more modest GODS AND MONSTERS.
Clearly, his scope compositions have grown more sophisticated since that first film, which may be a residual benefit of collaborating this time with master cinematographer Frederick Elmes, who summons up the richly textured earth tones of his equally superlative work on RIDE WITH THE DEVIL. Also indispensable, as usual, and well overdue for some recognition from the Academy, is the inimitable Carter Burwell, whose distinctive score is forced to do most of the emotional heavy lifting throughout, adding much-needed warmth to Kinsey’s often chilly manner. It is impossible to imagine the film nailing its cathartic wallop of an ending without Burwell’s masterful contributions. That he’s been this brilliant over three decades without a single Oscar nomination does nothing to diminish his work; it only confers heavy shame on the elitist nominating committee that routinely honors James Horner’s increasingly derivative scores.
As in GODS AND MONSTERS, Condon coaxes outstanding performances from his cast. Never the flashiest of actors, Liam Neeson is nonetheless a man of great gravitas; a quality that imbues the film with a sharp assertiveness worthy of its subject. His intensity is easily matched by Linney, whose unique DNA prohibits her from ever being less-than-intriguing onscreen. Considering how his character complicates, to a degree, the relationship between Kinsey and Clara, it shouldn’t be too shocking that Sarsgaard, who’s been getting better with each film, somewhat eclipses his costars as the bisexual Clyde. Also well worth mentioning is Bill Sadler, whose walk-on appearance as an unrepentant sexual deviant is a one-scene stunner on par with Ned Beatty’s verbal castration of Peter Finch in NETWORK.
No matter what happens on November 2nd, 2004, the culture war will still be ferociously pitched when KINSEY begins wandering into theaters the following week, at which point the tenacity and temerity of the smears that continue to be leveled against the man and his studies in lieu of factual rebuttals will undoubtedly double (as will, presumably, the film’s box office take). It will be frustrating to see spokespeople for the Kinsey Institute and probably Condon himself debating some nattering news hack, speaking to charges that were debunked ages ago rather than musing over the more pressing matter of how Kinsey’s work might move us farther into the disinfecting light of day, but such is the price of illumination. Still, one hopes that the public might, for once, resist the tabloidy revelations and rise to the calm, inviting, unprejudiced level of discourse put forth by Condon and this remarkable motion picture.
Faithfully submitted,
Mr. Beaks
Well said, man. Now, about that questionnaire you filled out... do you really think it’s safe to do “that” over thirty four times a day? Doesn’t it chafe?!
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