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We live in a world saturated with sex. A former US Senator and presidential candidate touts the efficacy of a pill for erectile dysfunction. TV ads hawk contraceptives and lotions for feminine yeast infections. Homosexuality has been mainstreamed on Will and Grace and A Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It hasn't always been like this.

This is just the extension of changing attitudes towards sex that go back through Dr. Ruth Westheimer (the little grandmotherly woman with a German accent who shocked people with the things she would talk about; grandmas aren't supposed to say these things!), back through The Joys of Sex and Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) and even The Total Woman, back through the Hite Report and Masters and Johnson, back through Playboy and Hustler.

All of this goes back to Alfred Kinsey. In a culture that kept sex locked in the bedroom, Kinsey sought to study it, measure it and understand it. His primary tool in this was the collection of thousands of sexual histories. He (and his assistants) would interview people about their sexual lives. When his report came out, it changed the way we thought about sex.

Kinsey gives us a look at the man who pulled sex in America out of the closet. To many he was a hero and an early leader in what became the sexual revolution. To others he was a dangerous perverter of social norm and values. The film leans more toward the former, but is not without questions about the man.

Kinsey is portrayed as obsessive. Early in his career he studied gall wasps -collecting, studying, and cataloging through the years over half a million specimens. When he began to teach a class in marriage (which discussed sex), that same sort of obsession led him to begin his broad study of American sexuality. As the film progresses we see that his obsession never relents: he constantly pushed to get more histories, to hear about or observe different manners of stimulation. He encourages his staff to have open marriages and swap wives. He has an affair with one of his staff, who then also has an affair with Kinsey's wife, with his full knowledge. Kinsey even branches out into a bit of masochistic behavior, seeking yet more understanding. It gets to the point that we begin to wonder if he has passed the boundary between science and voyeurism.

There is plenty of room in Kinsey's study to quibble (and people have been attacking both his methods and results for over 50 years). For example, since he didn't think a representative sample was possible, he tried to make up for the lack of quality of the sample with quantity. In the process he oversampled some groups (such as prisoners) and undersampled others (such as conservative Christians who wouldn't talk about sex to the interviewers). The film gives only the barest reference to these valid objections.

The film does recognize a key shortcoming in Kinsey's study: the lack of inclusion of love and emotion as among the key elements of sex. The audience sees a bit of that as we are briefly shown some possible consequences of the permissiveness that Kinsey encouraged among his staff. There is also a brief dialog about love not being something measurable and understood by science. But more, there is also a sense in which Kinsey, as portrayed here, is somewhat of an emotional cripple. We aren't really sure that he can fully appreciate love. He is passionate about his obsessions, but we rarely see that passion in relationships with people. We do see there is a flicker of warmth between Kinsey and his wife, but even then, the depth of their love is deeply buried within him. His relationship to his son (as his relationship with his father) is built on control and disappointment. His instructions to the staff about wife swapping is to forbid emotional attachments -as though such attachments were something that can be separated from sexual behavior.

This is a film that is filled with sex -but not the way most films are. To be sure, some of the visuals and dialog will offend some, but most of it is done almost clinically, even at dinner in the Kinsey home with their teen-aged children. But it is also done in such a way that most viewers will feel somewhat uncomfortable, even in these more sexually liberated times. Even the clinical discussions make us a little bit edgy, giving us a small taste of what the world felt as Kinsey began showing us that what we always thought about sexual behavior was not what was the reality in our culture.

No doubt many people will read the first paragraph of this review and think the world would be better off without such things. Maybe. Kinsey really didn't change America's sexual behavior. He merely tried to show us what that behavior really is. He made it something that could be talked about and studied. I understand sexuality to be a gift from God. The work of Kinsey and others through the years has allowed us to enjoy that gift more fully. This film gives us a chance to reflect on this gift and celebrate those who have opened that gift for us.

—Blog with Darrel Manson

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