Kinsey, A Brief Review
Kinsey is hugely disappointing, a conventional narrative devoid of insight or creativity. I actually wondered if it had been made for Showtime, because it has that TV movie kind of sensibility. It does have some explicit scenes, some good male nudity (Peter Sarsgaard) and so it titillates, which is why I suspect most of the audience was there. I wondered if some of its "ordinariness" was intentional, as an homage of sorts to this kind of movie, a Cinemascope biography from the 50s. But I found Bill Condon’s previous effort, Gods and Monsters to be similarly conventional. In both movies, the best moment belongs to Lynn Redgrave — here she appears at the very end, in a touching scene. The other actors are fine, though fatally underused as Liam Neeson is overused. More money has seemingly been spent on "fities" looks, makeup, hair and clothes, and not enough time on developing a script with a point.
Kinsey seemed to make a big mistake, though this conclusion may come from hindsight. Sexual histories MUST contain information about the feelings involved. I personally don’t believe that sex and its emotional repercussions can be divided. Even in our pre-civilized state, the ancestral environment, humans were humans, and probably had similar feelings of love, attachment, jealousy, rage, etc., connected with sexual partnering. There is a disclaimer in the movie toward the end, as Kinsey answers his assistant concerning "love," "Love isn’t measurable, and without measurements there is no science."
Did Kinsey really achieve anything? Yes, and no. I do believe his studies were/are some scientific value, but I don’t believe he had much sociological impact (as the end of the movie would have you believe) — it was the next generation, complete with The Pill, which fostered the sexual revolution. But then, perhaps Kinsey was an unknowing participant in modernization of outmoded moral values.
Posted on November 16, 2004, in Movies, Reviews, To Avoid and tagged By D. Fletcher. Bookmark the permalink. 13 Comments.
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My first post needs to be edited, but I can’t figure out how to do that.
Also, it might be nice to have a column of users who are currently online and here.
That’s disappointing to hear that you didn’t like the movie. From the previews I thought it had some good potential, and I don’t mind the titilation factor, either.
About the love/measurement/science thing, I actually agree with Kinsey. You can’t have science without measurement. This is, however, a limitation on science, not on love.
I don’t mind the disclaimer, but I think it was excusing the quality of the rest of the movie, by suggesting that because Kinsey was clinical, so is the movie. No, the movie should be dramatic. I don’t think they dramatized the material at all well.
But also, I think Kinsey himself didn’t understand that his research was actually titillating to him and to his assistants, that it was altering their regular sexual inclinations. There may have been people who contributed to the surveys who completely fabricated their answers. Kinsey tried to allow for this, by creating trick questions, but I still wonder how accurate were his data.
It is telling, however, that his first book, about male sexuality, was critically praised, but his second, about female sexuality, created a scandal.
About science and love, if one is truly scientific, then one believes emotions come from chemicals in the body, endorphins, beta blockers, etc. While it might be difficult to measure, making conclusions based on sexual activity without trying to categorize its emotional component seems fairly naive.
D.’s pointing out something important: you can’t scientifically measure something when you find yourself affected by the experiment itself. How can Kinsey, or another scientist, pretend to approach sexuality (or other human behavior, for that matter) analytically when we are far from being objective observational machines?
Yes, and if I may make a little personal observation that’s off the subject, some of my religious leaders, Bishops and Stake Presidents both, have clearly been titillated to hear my confession.
That’s interesting, D., about you priesthood leaders (and not altogether surprising, I might add).
Whether or not emotions are mechanistic in the way you describe (and I’m not so sure that “science” is in 100% agreement about it), I think putting any measurement on such things misses something intrinsic and essential in them.
That said, I do agree that some accouting for them is necessary in a study like this, and without that context it is difficult to draw any helpful conclusions.
Yeah, I was somewhat interested in this movie but then Adam Greenwood had to post something at T&S about Kinsey finding out that infants could have orgasms. I followed the link and read some pretty weird stuff that Kinsey did. I’m not sure how accurate it was… But that doesn’t stop me from being extremely judgmental.
All of a sudden, the “creep out” factor took over the “intriguing” factor in all this scientific sex stuff.
If the movie contained one ounce of that “creep” factor, it might be fun and interesting. As it is, it is pretty dull. I think the ultimate point they were trying to make is that Kinsey was simply a clinical researcher, and sex was the topic. They left out… all the fun stuff.
Hmm…I’m not sure you want the kind of creep factor that Kinsey was into. The man was clearly brilliant and made some good contributions, but he also had some, um, interesting fetishes.
Too bad about the movie – I’ve been looking forward to it. Maybe Closer, by Mike Nichols will have to be the emotional sex movie of the year.
I’ve always wondered about how Bishops and Stake Presidents handle being exposed to hearing first-hand accounts of sexual exploits without becoming titilated or obsessed with them. Must be tough.
It’s pretty amusing to me that I broke my tradition of waiting for the DVD, to see this one movie which probably none of the rest of you will go to. C’est la guerre, I guess.
I enjoyed the film more than D. did. The burning question I was asking, going into the film, was whether it would venerate Kinsey’s “contributions” to greater sexual awareness and (arguably) the loosening of American sexual mores without dealing forthrightly with the extraordinarily problematic nature of Kinsey’s research methods. Although the last scene of the film (with the lesbian) clearly was meant to drive home the point that Kinsey’s work changed many lives for the better, I was pleased that the movie also problematized the nature of Kinsey’s methods (if only a little bit).
Not sure I would go as far as to say that any of this Liam Neeson “Oscar buzz” is warranted, however.
Aaron B