B+

Writer-director Bill Condon, who triumphed with his subtle, imaginative treatment of James Whale’s final days in “Gods and Monsters” (1998), takes a similarly refined but not quite so moving approach to the biography of Alfred Kinsey, the pioneering American sex researcher. Well-groomed, handsomely mounted and adroitly laid out, “Kinsey” is a smooth, elegant docudrama in the mold of “A Beautiful Mind.” But it never achieves the dramatic resonance of that film or of “Gods and Monsters,” largely because it keeps its characters at more of an emotional remove. The picture that it most recalls, in fact, is Robert Redford’s “Quiz Show,” which treated the nation’s loss of confidence in what might broadly be termed media integrity in a fashion similar to that in which Condon approaches its loss of sexual innocence. In both cases the result is intelligently written and beautifully crafted, but ultimately–like its subject–a trifle schoolmasterish–a drama that’s more successful on the public level than the private one.

Liam Neeson stars as Kinsey, a man who–as we’re shown in a prologue–defies his priggish professor-minister father (John Lithgow) to go off and study biology, eventually becoming an authority on the reproductive processes of an obscure insect species through the assiduous collection of evidence and an esteemed professor at Indiana University. His reserved, highly disciplined mien doesn’t keep him from attracting the attention of a lovely co-ed named Clara (Laura Linney), whom he woos and weds; and it masks his unorthodox ideas about sex education, which he propounds in contrast to the tradition-bound reticence of his colleague Thurman Rice (Tim Curry). With the support of open-minded university president Herman Wells (Oliver Platt), he offers a course that addresses students’ sexual concerns in a far more direct and honest way, becoming a sort of campus icon in the process; and before long he’s come up with the notion of investigating sexual practices among the larger populace through a program of scientifically-structured interviews, collecting evidence in the same comprehensive way he did while studying the insect world. Assembling a team of trained interviewers that include his devoted student Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), Wardell Pomeroy (Chris O’Donnell) and Paul Gebhard (Timothy Hutton), and securing financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Alan Gregg (Dylan Baker), Kinsey and his team eventually compile the data that become the basis for their commission’s highly controversial best-selling reports on male and female sexual behavior in America. But the very success of the volumes leads to condemnation of Kinsey’s effect on society at large, and to the withdrawal of the financing he needs to continue his work; he becomes a more and more broken figure, desperately searching for rich patrons like Huntington Hartford (John McMartin) as his work remains unfinished and his own health deteriorates.

Condon lays all of this out with dexterity, if not always with the greatest subtlety (he certainly encourages both Lithgow and Curry to go to extremes in portraying his hero’s tightly-wound adversaries), keeping the broad sweep of Kinsey’s project in view and its permutations clear. On the personal side, the picture isn’t quite as successful, especially since Kinsey is such a rigid, prickly fellow with a sort of Messianic complex. Neeson certainly captures all those aspects of the researcher, but it doesn’t make the fellow any more sympathetic. On the other hand, Linney is so fine as his almost preternaturally supportive wife that you can inscribe her name on the list of Oscar nominees now–and it mightn’t be too early to be dusting off a statuette for her, either; and Sarsgaard, who’s been giving one outstanding performance after another ever since “Boys Don’t Cry,” continues the series with a vibrant, beautifully textured turn as a young man who’s important to Kinsey not only professionally but personally, inviting his mentor to an act of sexual experimentation that’s integral to his understanding of the subject he’s embraced. Most of the supporting cast is more expert than outstanding, but William Sadler punches across a brief scene as a subject whose bragging revelations of his sexual prowess prove a bit much even for Kinsey, and Vanessa Redgrave’s radiance shines in a closing cameo as a woman whose thanks to Kinsey are intended to represent all those whose lives were changed by his studies. It’s a bit obvious an attempt to play up the positive impact of Kinsey’s work–just as a final scene for Alfred and Clara in a forest, showing his renewed dedication even in the face of decreasing support, comes across as falsely uplifting (and too strenuous a counterpoint to a bathtub scene in which Kinsey hits the depth of his despair). Even its less successful moments are easy to take, however, since the picture has been so carefully mounted: Richard Sherman’s production design, Nicholas Lundy’s art direction, Andrew Baseman’s sets and Bruce Finlayson’s costumes are all impeccable, and they’re splendidly set off by Joe Dunton’s elegant widescreen camerawork and Carter Burwell’s characteristically supportive score.

As a whole “Kinsey” does a reasonably good job of dramatizing the conflict between social convention and sexual liberation that its subject’s massive projects represented. Unfortunately, like its protagonist–at least as he’s depicted here–the picture is just a tad too stiff and controlled to do the subject full justice.