Film Review: Kinsey (2004)

The Sexual Revolution stands as one of the very few transformative currents of 20th Century Western society still widely lauded as an unambiguous positive achievement. Whilst its progression was undeniably slow, fraught with contradiction, and often nebulous in precise definition, its tangible impact on individual liberty and social mores remains profound. Among its most significant, albeit contentious, benchmarks was the seismic shift catalysed by Alfred Charles Kinsey (1894–1956), the American biologist whose pioneering, taboo-shattering research into human sexuality fundamentally reshaped public discourse. Bill Condon’s 2004 biopic, Kinsey, attempts to chronicle this pivotal figure – the so-called ‘father of modern American sexology’ – whose dual tomes, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), collectively known as the Kinsey Reports, became improbable bestsellers and cultural touchstones. Despite enduring controversy and persistent criticism regarding methodology and interpretation, these works undeniably paved the intellectual groundwork for the subsequent loosening of sexual constraints in the 1960s and 70s. Condon’s film, however, whilst tackling this vital subject, ultimately falters, delivering a curiously lifeless and dramatically inert portrayal that struggles to match the revolutionary fervour of its subject.

The narrative structure is conventional biopic fare, framing Kinsey’s (Liam Neeson) life story through the device of him acting as a subject within his own research protocol, answering intimate questions about his sexual history. This prompts a series of flashbacks, beginning with formative vignettes of a repressed childhood under a stern, sexually anxious father, before settling on the adult Kinsey as a meticulous professor of entomology specialising in gall wasps at Indiana University. His meeting and marriage to student Clara ‘Mac’ McMillan (Laura Linney) proves pivotal; their initial, comically disastrous attempts at consummation expose a mutual, profound ignorance about basic human physiology – a revelation that sparks Kinsey’s scientific curiosity. Applying his rigorous biological methodology to this societal blind spot, he, Mac, and a growing circle of students and faculty members embark on systematic data collection. This collaborative effort gradually evolves into the monumental project yielding the Kinsey Reports. Crucially, the research leads to the conceptualisation of the Kinsey Scale, challenging the rigid binary of hetero- and homosexuality by demonstrating the spectrum of sexual orientation. The film heavily implies Kinsey’s own journey along this scale, depicting his bisexuality through a relationship with the charismatic young researcher Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), tacitly accepted within the Kinsey household’s unconventional, polyamorous dynamic. The latter half charts the inevitable backlash: conservative outrage, Cold War-era accusations of communism and ‘un-Americanism’, financial pressures on the Kinsey Institute, and the toll on Kinsey’s health.

Kinsey arrived with significant contextual baggage, released in late 2004 shortly after George W. Bush’s re-election, widely interpreted as a victory for the religious Right and socially conservative values. It was immediately framed, often simplistically, as Hollywood’s liberal counter-arsenal – a deliberate, Oscar-season rebuttal to the prevailing political climate, particularly concerning homosexuality. This positioning feels less organic and more like strategic messaging. Condon, a gay filmmaker who earned acclaim with Gods and Monsters, places pronounced emphasis on Kinsey’s bisexuality and the institute’s sexual fluidity, arguably leaning into his own perspective. While this focus is historically grounded, its prominence within the film’s narrative arc feels calibrated for contemporary political resonance, foreshadowing the more explicit mainstream challenges to conservative orthodoxy that Brokeback Mountain would deliver the following year. It risks reducing Kinsey’s complex scientific mission to a primarily identity-political symbol for modern audiences.

On strictly technical grounds, Kinsey is undeniably competent. The mid-20th Century aesthetic is reconstructed with period-appropriate fidelity on a modest budget, avoiding the glossy anachronisms that plague lesser period pieces. The performances are uniformly strong, with Neeson capturing Kinsey’s obsessive intellect, social awkwardness, and underlying passion with remarkable nuance. Laura Linney is equally compelling as Mac, portraying her evolution from naive student to indispensable intellectual partner and sexual pioneer with quiet strength; both actors convincingly embody their characters across decades, a significant feat. Peter Sarsgaard brings a necessary, unsettling magnetism to Clyde Martin.

Yet, for all its surface competence, Kinsey’s fundamental failure lies in its crippling lack of dramatic tension and emotional engagement. The initial premise – a scientist applying empirical rigour to the hidden world of human sexuality – holds genuine intrigue. Witnessing Kinsey methodically dismantle societal hypocrisy by uncovering biological realities long obscured by prudery should be electrifying. Instead, the film devolves into a dry, almost mechanical chronicle of research milestones, committee meetings, and data collection. Crucially, Kinsey and his inner circle exist within the insulated, privileged bubble of upper-middle-class academia. Whilst societal disapproval is mentioned, the palpable sense of personal or professional peril – the genuine fear that drives revolutionary figures – is largely absent until the very late stages, when the backlash materialises. By then, the narrative momentum has stalled. The characters seem curiously insulated from the very societal earthquake they are causing; their struggles feel internal and bureaucratic rather than existentially threatening. This absence of sustained, high-stakes drama renders much of the middle section ponderous.

This dramatic inertia extends to the film’s conclusion. A late scene features a middle-aged woman (Lynn Redgrave) approaching Kinsey to thank him for enabling her to accept her lesbianism and find happiness. Intended as a moment of cathartic validation, it instead rings profoundly false – a sermon delivered with zero subtlety, feeling entirely manufactured to provide a neat, affirmative bow on a complex legacy. It lacks the organic emotional weight such a moment demands, serving only to underscore the film’s struggle to connect its academic subject matter to visceral human experience.

Perhaps most damningly, Kinsey is suffused with a tone utterly at odds with its subject matter. One might reasonably expect a film about the liberation of human sexuality, even one grounded in scientific inquiry, to possess some vitality, wit, or even joyousness in its exploration of such a fundamentally human and often pleasurable aspect of life. Instead, Condon delivers a film that is relentlessly non-humorous, serious, dour, and clinically detached. Carter Burwell’s score actively reinforces this oppressive atmosphere rather than providing counterpoint or emotional lift. The visual palette is similarly muted and restrained. This clinical approach, while perhaps aiming for objectivity, inadvertently mirrors the very Victorian repression Kinsey sought to dismantle.

In essence, Kinsey is a film that meticulously documents the wha* and how of its subject’s work but remains frustratingly distant from the “why” – the profound human need, the liberation, the messy, vibrant reality of sexuality that Kinsey’s research sought to illuminate. It is a well-acted, technically sound dissertation on a revolutionary figure, but it lacks the dramatic spark, emotional resonance, and tonal appropriateness needed to truly engage with the seismic cultural shift it depicts. It tells us Kinsey changed the world, but it fails to make us feel why that change mattered, or the exhilarating, terrifying human cost and reward involved. For a film about breaking free from prudery, its own presentation remains stubbornly, ironically, buttoned-up.

RATING: 4/10 (+)

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