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selenakThe other night, I watched Kinsey. This last year was really the year of the biopic, wasn't it? Kinsey was written and directed by Bill Condon, who did the same for the excellent Gods and Monsters.
Compared with this earlier effort, Kinsey is a tad more conventional, in the sense of covering the childhood-to-death span in a linear way (as opposed to Gods and Monsters being set during the last weeks of James Whale's life, with three brief but significant blashbacks to his childhood, war time, and time as a top Hollywood director respectively). Which means there isn't the same emotional density and concentration on only a few characters, but that is fitting with the subject, fitting with Alfred Kinsey's approach to gall wasps (his first scientific love) and human sexuality alike. Condon still comes up with a clever way to get us into the narration, framing his story through Kinsey letting his co-workers practice a questionaire on himself.
Human sexuality is obviously quite central to the story, and Condon does a great job of being layered about it. You get the point about the terrible ignorance of the times direly needing the study and openness Kinsey provided, but he doesn't pretend that the other extreme of the scale, sex as a duty free commodity, is the ideal solution, either. If the young Kinsey and his bride, both virgins at their wedding night, are painfully clumsy (and painfully shy, leading to physical pain) early in the film, the extramarital switcheroo among Kinsey's co-workers late in the movie causes a lot of emotional pain. "Maybe those lines are there to keep us from hurting each other," one of them tells Kinsey who doesn't quite get it.
The man himself, played by Liam Neeson (who doesn't look anywhere near 26 which he's supposed to be early on, but never mind, he does look like middle-aged Kinsey which covers the majority of the movie), comes across as a three dimensional human being. We get to see his endearing sides (that fascination with infinite diversity, whether in gall wasps or human sexuality, which never comes across as voyeuristic) as well as the darker ones; he repeats the intolerant behaviour his own father subjected him to with his son, really doesn't get why confessing adultery should be painful to his wife the first time he does it, and is about as diplomatic as a sledgehammer with everyone except the people he's interviewing.
Not coincidentally, the only time he and his father manage to have an actual non-hostile conversation is when Kinsey has goaded the old man in allowing him an interview, switches to his dispassionate and non-judgemental, putting-people-at-ease interviewer mood and realises, along with the audience, that the fearsome tyrant of his youth is a human being with his own pretty terrible emotional scars. It's a very moving scene, precisely it's played so understated. In your avarage father/son drama, especially in a biopic, you'd expect such a scene revolving around the father finally seeing the light and apologizing to his son; instead, you get the son saying "I'm sorry, Dad", meaning not his views but his father's entire messed-up life.
As for Mrs. Kinsey, Laura Linney, whom I've seen as Elizabeth Proctor on Broadway (with Liam Neeson as John Proctor, btw) in The Crucible, brings the fairly typical "loving spouse" role to life with a salty humour, and so one never feels compelled to regard her as a pale helpmeet. You get the feeling that "Prok" (Kinsey's nickname, given to him by his students) and "Mac" make it through the various crisis' of their marriage because they were friends first.
As a sidenote, the following amused me: after The Phantom Menace got released, there was this huge outburst in Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan slash, based as far as I could see on nothing more than Qui-Gon's death scene and the fact Liam Neeson is a charismatic and not bad looking actor, and Ewan MacGregor a very attractive one. Now in Kinsey you have Liam Neeson again, playing middle-aged Alfred Kinsey discovering his bisexuality, and the scene in question is a pretty powerful one: one of Kinsey's co-workers who is travelling with him asks him where he places himself on the sexual scale, Kinsey, somewhat flustered, replies, the young man, at this point because he just came out of the bathroom being completely naked (and this film, to its credit, does not what Larry Flynt does, i.e. complains about prudery while adhering to it itself in the visual depiction, so we get a front view with no strategic lighting covering anything), asks whether he ever did anything about it, and then there is a palpable charge between them and Kinsey kisses him. And such a kiss - very, very hungry and intense. Did this lead to either screencaps or fanfic? Not that I could see. Presumably because Kinsey presents Neeson without any glamourizing make-up; he's not ugly, but he does look like a decidedly unromantic professor, and his propensity to see his own life as something to be clinically dissected and studied just like other people's habits probably works like a cold shower as well.
Content-wise, the film gets darker as it progresses, with the lightheartedness and feeling of triumph reaching its peak after the publication of Kinsey's first volume, the one about male sexuality (at which point the soundtrack treats us to It's Too Darn Hot by Cole Porter, who immortalized Prok in the lyrics with "according to the Kinsey report, every avarage man you know/ much prefers to play his favourite sport when the temperature is low"). Ever after, things get out of hand, both in Kinsey's increasingly obsessive research methods and ability to alienate his sponsors, and in the public's rejection of the second volume, dealing with female sexuality. ("Who wants to think about their mothers and daughters masturbating and having sex," a character points out.) Still, Condon ends the film on a note of grace, with Kinsey and Mac after his crushing defeat wandering the woods together as they did in their youth, and him getting as entranced as ever by nature's infinite diversity.
All in all, Kinsey doesn't have the visual or emotional power of The Aviator, but it's an excellent contribution to last years' outburst of biopics nonetheless, and I'm glad I have watched.
In other news, I posted the beta'd version of my BSG challenge entry, "Story of a Lifetime", which you can also find here. And not that I'm a tad obsessed, but:
Battlestar Galactica is love.
Compared with this earlier effort, Kinsey is a tad more conventional, in the sense of covering the childhood-to-death span in a linear way (as opposed to Gods and Monsters being set during the last weeks of James Whale's life, with three brief but significant blashbacks to his childhood, war time, and time as a top Hollywood director respectively). Which means there isn't the same emotional density and concentration on only a few characters, but that is fitting with the subject, fitting with Alfred Kinsey's approach to gall wasps (his first scientific love) and human sexuality alike. Condon still comes up with a clever way to get us into the narration, framing his story through Kinsey letting his co-workers practice a questionaire on himself.
Human sexuality is obviously quite central to the story, and Condon does a great job of being layered about it. You get the point about the terrible ignorance of the times direly needing the study and openness Kinsey provided, but he doesn't pretend that the other extreme of the scale, sex as a duty free commodity, is the ideal solution, either. If the young Kinsey and his bride, both virgins at their wedding night, are painfully clumsy (and painfully shy, leading to physical pain) early in the film, the extramarital switcheroo among Kinsey's co-workers late in the movie causes a lot of emotional pain. "Maybe those lines are there to keep us from hurting each other," one of them tells Kinsey who doesn't quite get it.
The man himself, played by Liam Neeson (who doesn't look anywhere near 26 which he's supposed to be early on, but never mind, he does look like middle-aged Kinsey which covers the majority of the movie), comes across as a three dimensional human being. We get to see his endearing sides (that fascination with infinite diversity, whether in gall wasps or human sexuality, which never comes across as voyeuristic) as well as the darker ones; he repeats the intolerant behaviour his own father subjected him to with his son, really doesn't get why confessing adultery should be painful to his wife the first time he does it, and is about as diplomatic as a sledgehammer with everyone except the people he's interviewing.
Not coincidentally, the only time he and his father manage to have an actual non-hostile conversation is when Kinsey has goaded the old man in allowing him an interview, switches to his dispassionate and non-judgemental, putting-people-at-ease interviewer mood and realises, along with the audience, that the fearsome tyrant of his youth is a human being with his own pretty terrible emotional scars. It's a very moving scene, precisely it's played so understated. In your avarage father/son drama, especially in a biopic, you'd expect such a scene revolving around the father finally seeing the light and apologizing to his son; instead, you get the son saying "I'm sorry, Dad", meaning not his views but his father's entire messed-up life.
As for Mrs. Kinsey, Laura Linney, whom I've seen as Elizabeth Proctor on Broadway (with Liam Neeson as John Proctor, btw) in The Crucible, brings the fairly typical "loving spouse" role to life with a salty humour, and so one never feels compelled to regard her as a pale helpmeet. You get the feeling that "Prok" (Kinsey's nickname, given to him by his students) and "Mac" make it through the various crisis' of their marriage because they were friends first.
As a sidenote, the following amused me: after The Phantom Menace got released, there was this huge outburst in Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan slash, based as far as I could see on nothing more than Qui-Gon's death scene and the fact Liam Neeson is a charismatic and not bad looking actor, and Ewan MacGregor a very attractive one. Now in Kinsey you have Liam Neeson again, playing middle-aged Alfred Kinsey discovering his bisexuality, and the scene in question is a pretty powerful one: one of Kinsey's co-workers who is travelling with him asks him where he places himself on the sexual scale, Kinsey, somewhat flustered, replies, the young man, at this point because he just came out of the bathroom being completely naked (and this film, to its credit, does not what Larry Flynt does, i.e. complains about prudery while adhering to it itself in the visual depiction, so we get a front view with no strategic lighting covering anything), asks whether he ever did anything about it, and then there is a palpable charge between them and Kinsey kisses him. And such a kiss - very, very hungry and intense. Did this lead to either screencaps or fanfic? Not that I could see. Presumably because Kinsey presents Neeson without any glamourizing make-up; he's not ugly, but he does look like a decidedly unromantic professor, and his propensity to see his own life as something to be clinically dissected and studied just like other people's habits probably works like a cold shower as well.
Content-wise, the film gets darker as it progresses, with the lightheartedness and feeling of triumph reaching its peak after the publication of Kinsey's first volume, the one about male sexuality (at which point the soundtrack treats us to It's Too Darn Hot by Cole Porter, who immortalized Prok in the lyrics with "according to the Kinsey report, every avarage man you know/ much prefers to play his favourite sport when the temperature is low"). Ever after, things get out of hand, both in Kinsey's increasingly obsessive research methods and ability to alienate his sponsors, and in the public's rejection of the second volume, dealing with female sexuality. ("Who wants to think about their mothers and daughters masturbating and having sex," a character points out.) Still, Condon ends the film on a note of grace, with Kinsey and Mac after his crushing defeat wandering the woods together as they did in their youth, and him getting as entranced as ever by nature's infinite diversity.
All in all, Kinsey doesn't have the visual or emotional power of The Aviator, but it's an excellent contribution to last years' outburst of biopics nonetheless, and I'm glad I have watched.
In other news, I posted the beta'd version of my BSG challenge entry, "Story of a Lifetime", which you can also find here. And not that I'm a tad obsessed, but:
Battlestar Galactica is love.
