Kinsey (2004)

Back in the day, this greeting card was deemed hilarious: The cover screamed, ''SEX!'' And the inside giggled, ''and now that I have your attention...'' There's no longer any need to send a card, since SEX! has permeated our culture's yackety conversation — these days it's an obsession demanding attention in public politics as well as in private bedrooms. So there's an argument to be made that under conditions of such din, it's easy to dismiss the furor unleashed by the findings of Dr. Alfred Charles Kinsey more than half a century ago as quaint. Kinsey was, after all, the stern-looking, bow-tied scientist who wrote the books Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953); and his considered, nonjudgmental conclusion, arrived at from methodical interviews conducted with thousands of subjects, was that when it comes to SEX!, there's no such thing as ''normal,'' only ''common'' and ''rare.'' Or to put it another way, lots of different humans have sex lots of different ways — and in this, humans are not so different from one another, after all.

The release of Kinsey dispels all rumors of quaintness. If anything, filmmaker Bill Condon's considered, nonjudgmental, we're-all-adults-here take on the researcher and his findings — a portrait of a revolution, really, as well as of a driven revolutionary — proves that when it comes to SEX!, there's nothing old under the sun. And that when it comes to Kinsey the man, as well as ''Kinsey,'' the shorthand for his research, the name still has the power to arouse.

As does Liam Neeson, who plays the title role with his own sexual muscularity tensed into a tight ball. Condon (who wrote and directed with the same sharp delicacy he brought to Gods and Monsters) presents Kinsey as a serious, rather somber, raw-boned man, physically inexpressive, at least with clothes on. Then again, this same son of a radically uptight Methodist minister is seen to be a square Daddy-o who left behind virginal ignorance on his wedding day for a marital life of sexual pleasure with his free-spirited wife, Clara McMillen (played with a quiet roar by Laura Linney); who explored homosexual pleasure with one of his researchers, Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), before Martin in turn took Kinsey's missus to bed; who encouraged the swapping of sexual partners among his research team; and who recorded the sexual histories of pedophiles with the same impartiality he applied to fellows who did it with farm animals.

It's both marvelous and, perhaps, a scintilla too diverting that Neeson contains Kinsey's multitudes with such ease; as a result, we're a little too charmed (and therefore undershocked), even while the movie invites us to make a connection between the man's relentless commitment to his research (at the risk of damaging personal and professional relationships) and the inhibitions and lovelessness of his childhood. Linney's ''Mac,'' as she was called, is equally a marvel of tolerance, even when deeply upset by her husband's demolition of sexual boundaries; Sarsgaard is characteristically riveting as the invaluable Martin; and every character, however passing, is casually exquisite and exquisitely cast. Condon has devised an elegant narrative structure that threads Kinseyan interviews between dramatic reenactments and introduces sexual imagery (photos of genitals, made-for-the-movie research footage of coupling) with a calm absence of prurience. The director also allows himself small, downtownish jokes along the way, including the participation of The Rocky Horror Picture Show's glam-drag dazzler, Tim Curry, as a prudish professor who preaches abstinence.

Kinsey is patient and educational and never (darn it) rude or shocking. Instead, it's measured and scrupulously matter-of-fact about hetero-, homo-, and bisexuality, and about as tastefully unsensational as a script can be when it includes a scene where the good doctor punctures his penis so he can experience what the pain might feel like to a sexual masochist. Toward the end of the picture, when public outcry has cost the professor his funding, his health is in ruins, and he doubts the value of his life's work, he's visited by a mother of grown children (Gods and Monsters' Lynn Redgrave, in a stately cameo) who has found lesbian love later in life and wants to thank the man who wrote the books that allowed her to understand herself. And it's no surprise that the climax of Redgrave's speech (''You saved my life, sir'') is the snippet selected for the movie ad on TV. While these days, the website of the conservative group Focus on the Family contains a call to arms about ''what you can do to combat [Kinsey's] influence in your community''), Kinsey enumerates all the ways the snake — SEX! — is already out of the bag.

You Might Also Like

• DVD Review Kinsey (May 17, 2005) | Dalton Ross
• Movie Review (Nov 24, 2004)
• Movie Review (Nov 24, 2004)
• Movie Review (Nov 24, 2004)
• All About Kinsey
• In the News ''Kinsey,'' ''Six Feet Under'' nab GLAAD trophies (Nov 12, 2004) | Michael Slezak