Kinsey is Bill Condon's biopic of pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson), harkening back to the bad ol' days of the 1940s, when - to put it bluntly - nobody knew anything. It was an era where questions on sex were just much groping in the dark. Some of the questions people are shown asking are ineffably sad in their ignorance. And small wonder; prior to Kinsey's famed 1948 publication Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, almost no serious scientific study had been done on the subject of sex.

Condon's screenplay highlight's Kinsey's upbringing under his strict religious father (John Lithgow) and its effect of creating a general awkwardness with sexuality all the way to the day of his marriage. Kinsey's subsequent sexual awakening with his wife Clara (Laura Linney) is something to behold, not just an initiation into sex but a discovery of a new world.

It's perhaps too pat an explanation for Kinsey's shift from pre-eminent Gall wasp researcher to pioneer in sexual studies, but it suffices as a frame for which this very humanistic film hangs its depiction of a flawed but brave man. Kinsey, as played by Neeson, is prone to rages, and in his quest for utter objectivity can alienate others. Which is to say that everything in this film turns on the quality of its actors, and Condon, director of the excellent Gods and Monsters, elicits some powerful acting from Neeson and Linney. Neeson and Linney have some marvelous chemistry together as a couple. Linney for one expresses vividly that combination of love, jealousy, and exasperation that Clara feels for Kinsey. In the role of Clyde Martin, assistant and lover of both Kinseys, Peter Sarsgaard is, as always, an astounding actor.

The film alludes to all the controversies of Alfred Kinsey's life - the hints of sexual activity with his researchers, the childhood sexual data, the Congressional hearings targeted at Kinsey's work - although they have been modified for dramatic purposes. For instance, in real life, as the Kinsey Institute's excellent FAQ on the film notes, Indiana University stepped in the void left after the Rockefeller Foundation was effectively forced by Congress to withdraw funding. Yet thankfully, Condon avoids turning the film into a moral polemic, giving us a balanced portrait of a man who, for all his flaws, pulled the study of sex into the light of day.

First posted at Delta Sierra Arts