Product: Gods and Monsters (1998)
Rating: 4.0
"Years later...when you talk about this...and you will..."
This is a very good film...moving and insightfulin many ways...but also somehow limited...while,perhaps, its heart seems to be trying to be inthe right place concerning relationship, friendship,love...it is all told in a context of the verymannerisms and affectations and "fairy"-taleambience that all too many non-sensitive,all-too-prone-to-misunderstand persons will taketo be the "justification" for their dislike,phobia, and sickened disdain...And perhaps it is trying to do too much...thelove and loss of the character Whale for hisfriend who died in the trenches of World War Iwhile Whale survived...and lived...and longed...and felt guilt...and loss...is insightful...butgets all tangled with that suffocating gas-maskscene with the Clay character...and Whale comesoff as being bizarre, if not mad...The ending is not satisfying to me...the Claycharacter just "has to" be shown to have madeit through the encounter "safely" straight...married...with a kid...who can say that he knewthe director of the movie "Frankenstein"...thenwalk out in the rain and pretend to be theFrankenstein monster...and seem to be laughingat himself...I should have thought that a moremeaningful ending would have been if he hadstood there in the rain...not acting like somenut-case stalking around in the rain like amonster...but thinking about that driven,haunted man he had known...and if it had notbeen beyond his "macho" powers, to have wepta tear or two to mingle with the rain dropsstreaming down his cheeks...But maybe sensitivity...and even this fairlymoving film are not the way to go...there areother films that speak about oppression andmisunderstanding better... the original"Planet of the Apes" is a very goodfilm about an oppressive society...just turnit into an allegory about those who areexpected, if not forced, to be "mute"in society...but there is also thefilm "Another Country" (1985), which unfortunately,does not seem to be available on video anylonger...it is a beautifully done film...butmakes its point about society and its intolerancejust as well...