Despite the revolutionary ideas that led to Alfred Kinsey's work and fame, the entertaining new cinematic biography of his life, KINSEY, doesn't take the hint. The directorial debut of Bill Condon (the talented screenwriter behind Oscar winners like Chicago and Gods and Monsters), KINSEY does an admirable job of capturing the sensational power inherent in its subject's choice of study: human sexual behavior. Instead of approaching the radical and groundbreaking scientist with an equally innovative spirit, however, Condon's film opts for the generic trademarks of biopic melodrama. Like so many recent biographical films (Ray, De-Lovely, and especially A Beautiful Mind), KINSEY frames its subject as a brilliant, tempestuous, and misunderstood man with a long-suffering, angelic wife, battered by society that simply couldn't comprehend his brilliance. Whether these facts are true of Alfred Kinsey's story is a matter for historians; as a film, however, KINSEY seems at odds with itself. Here is a man who forever changed the world through his pioneering rejection of moral ineptitude and his absolutist belief in science. It is a shame that the film could not muster the same courage. KINSEY is fascinating and enjoyable, but it could have been so much more.

Perhaps the most surprising element of KINSEY is its stark lesson about history...and the truism about how it repeats itself. Stem cell research, homosexuality, choice...the echoes of today's reactionary religious fundamentalism resonate in this story from fifty years ago. The conservative forces are amassing once again to intimidate the scientist with an anti-sex ideology. Even as KINSEY began its theatrical run, protests had been organized around the country to protest the film, and it is easy to see why Kinsey scares them so. His approach to sexuality refused to be driven by moral dogma, but rather, by the need for scientific study...a god fundamentalist Christians refuse to acknowledge. Even more important, however, is the cultural shift that Kinsey caused with the 1948 publication of his book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. The study did more than address the woeful lack of information on sexual activity up to that time; by measuring the culture, Kinsey forever changed it. The idea that there was no sexual norm or "deviant" behavior, but rather a world of infinite variety and diversity, had social implications that cannot be overstated. It meant that, whether religious zealots liked it or not, we were all normal.

KINSEY tries to frame these ideas in human terms, giving Dr. Kinsey (Liam Neeson) a personal blossoming that mirrors his scientific ones, a growth of personal experience and a deepening of his own humanity. The film is not especially sexy or erotic, but it does spend an inordinate amount of time discussing Love...a subject that Kinsey was unable to quantify, measure or explain. The inextricable links between sex and love torment Kinsey throughout his life, whether it is in relations with his own wife Clara (Laura Linney), his assistant and sometime lover Clyde (Peter Sarsgaard), or in the pained experience of his subjects. In the end, the good doctor admitted his failure to connect the dots of emotionality and physicality. Condon tries to place some of the confusion at the feet of Kinsey's distant preacher father (John Lithgow), but despite a marvelous performance by Lithgow, the scenes between the two of them reek of cliché and convention.

The cast is almost uniformly exceptional. Neeson and Linney, who have worked together on Broadway, share a rapport that is rare in cinema; Linney, in particular, is exemplary in cracking Clara's heart apart, and then slowly putting the pieces back together again. Sarsgaard is a bit implacable as the passionate Clyde, but both Chris O'Donnell and Timothy Hutton shine as early staffers in Kinsey's laboratory. (There are a number of interesting and surprising cameos in the film, including 2004 Tony Award winner Jefferson Mays and John Epperson, better known internationally as the drag performance artists Lypsinka, as two effete gay men Kinsey tries to engage as study subjects. He is more successful with Barbara, an elderly woman who has her sexual activity recorded, played with charming wit by stage veteran Kathleen Chalfant.)

Even overshadowed by personal drama, KINSEY is still a vital and necessary film. There are few historical figures in the last century who could claim a more direct effect on civilization; Kinsey changed not only the way we think about sex, but how we talk about it, demystifying our private moments and absolving all of us of the unnecessary shame and suffering foisted upon generation after generation. One may challenge the assertion of Kinsey as a hero, but I'd be hard pressed to think of anything less heroic.

-- Gabriel Shanks