Product: Gods and Monsters (1998)
Rating: 4.0
sensitive portrait
This film is a reconstruction of director James Whale's last days and thoughts. It is taken from Christopher Bram's speculative novel, "The Father of Frankenstein". Most famous for the two original films about the creation of life (seen as 'monsters'), Whale was found floating in his swimming pool. Officially called a suicide, the circumstances were questionable. Whale was gay in a time when Hollywood, at its most image-conscious and hypocritical, shunned any association with a lifestyle that suffused the industry. "Gods and Monsters" is a sensitive and substantial portrait of two men. Jim, played with elegance, poignancy, and humor by Ian McKellan, has had a stroke and is suffering the indignities of impaired functions and mental state. It is anathema for the formerly vigorous and humorous man to contemplate a future of declining health and increasing dependence. Jim befriends his hunky gardener, Clay Boone. Brendan Fraser is outstanding, as well as sweet and desireable, in the role. The roughly handsome young man models for Jim, preferably shirtless, and they talk. Lonely individualists with secret heartaches, the two men form an intimate, affectionate, and combative bond. Whale wistfully and painfully remembers, in haunting flashbacks, his youth, career, and tragic love for a young soldier in the ghastly trenches of WWI (learning first-hand the 'gallows' humor he brought to his films). These memories become increasingly mixed up with his relationship to Clay, who he begins to confuse with his 'monster'. The younger man, with honor and compassion, sticks by Whale till the end, and remembers his friend in a touching epilogue. This is a loving tribute to a man who contributed to, profited from, and was ultimately "killed" by a heartless studio system.