Bill Condon
Kinsey

No. I had no idea who Alfred Kinsey was before watching this film. I don't want to lie to you, to tell you that I already knew everything about him, that I always considered him a genius, that my grandfather knew him and they were great friends... I don't want to do that at all. But last week, watching this film, I admit I became quite interested in this strange character who lived in the first half of the 20th century.

Initially a biologist fervently studying a certain type of wasps (he classified hundreds of thousands to notice their differences), he realized, after getting married, that he knew a ton about wasps but in bed, a wasp knew infinitely more than he did. Thus, after noticing the ignorance many people had regarding the sexual act, he decided to begin a series of studies on sex following the same methodology as insect classification: examining as many specimens as possible to notice the differences, abnormalities, and most common practices. He later published two books presenting the results of years of study, which were very successful in America but at the same time attracted the disdain of Puritan America. This brief summary does not do justice to his work, but it seemed necessary to at least give an idea of the topic dealt with in the film. For further information, I refer you to Wikipedia, which will instruct and guide you better.

Let's get to the film now (these summaries are such a drag!). As you might have already understood, it's a biopic about Alfred Kinsey, narrating his story from childhood to the semi-failure he faced in his later years. The protagonist is played by a Liam Neeson in splendid form (I would almost say at the level of Oscar Schindler), accompanied by a graceful Laura Linney as his wife and a convincing Chris O'Donnell as his assistant.

The film opens with a black and white sequence where Kinsey is interrogated about his sexual preferences by some characters who seem to be psychologists (but it will be revealed later that this is not the case... if I tell you everything, where's the fun?) but this interrogation is intermittently interrupted by color flashbacks (for some reason, this choice of black and white for the present and color for the past seemed like a good idea to me) that clearly show the life of Kinsey up to that moment between a preacher father, wasps (many wasps, too many wasps!), marriages, and the success of his studies in sexology. The film flows well, tackling serious issues such as the ignorance of Puritan America about sex with the right irony, and a not-so-happy childhood seen in a not overly melodramatic way. The events of Kinsey's life from when he gained the right attention are many and sometimes very complex, but the director once again manages to surprise: it seems like a delicate flight over the protagonist's life, sometimes stopping, taking a fleeting but precise look, and moving on to another adventure without ever falling into clichés or tear-jerking scenes.

But biopics, as we know, are always difficult to tackle, and so the film has a tremendous slowdown right when Kinsey's star begins to fade: inexplicably, the film starts to falter, stumbling over all the most common mistakes of this genre of film. You can see how the protagonist starts to resemble the inverse of his father: if the latter had too closed a mindset, the former's is too open, but the effect of alienating the children is the same. The first tear-jerking scenes or simply bad scenes begin to appear, like the misunderstandings with his collaborators (surely there must have been some but here they are resolved in a really ridiculous way with Kinsey, like a superhero, trying to make everything right with his personality), and the progressive distrust of America towards him, which resolves with Kinsey aging prematurely. The ending is therefore really cliché with an already defeated Liam Neeson finding comfort and regaining strength from the words of a lady claiming how important he was for her life (not even in the endings of '80s comedies!).

So, is it a film to watch or not? In my opinion, yes, for the importance of the character first of all: it's thought-provoking that after his death, America has always tried to return to its Puritan morals, seeing sex as something to be kept well hidden (look at the censors on cinema in America today, capable of showing the cruelest revenge but very wary of sex scenes or even just nudity), and how it has ultimately tried to forget Kinsey and his studies (even the film, unlike many other overhyped and very poor biopics, went almost unnoticed). Moreover, it should be seen for one of Liam Neeson's best performances in my opinion, capable of surprising everyone with a gay kiss (yes, that's in there too) after comic book characters like Qui Gon Jinn.

One last note I want to make about the rating: it is an average of the 4 well-deserved for the first 2/3 of the film and the 2 for the last part (by the way, can someone explain to me why nothing was done to age Liam Neeson given that years pass, apart from the hair which sometimes turns whiter and sometimes returns to its original color?). A fully deserved passing grade, in short.