Thursday, November 5, 1998
Director honors ‘Frankenstein’ creator
FILM: Poignant contrasts in Whale’s life depicted in ‘Gods and
Monsters’
By Cheryl Klein
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Author Christopher Bram called his fictionalized account of
director James Whale’s last days "Father of Frankenstein," and
while Bill Condon’s script remains devoted (often verbatim) to the
novel, the filmmakers were wise to change the title.
Though Whale did give birth to the screen version of everyone’s
favorite flat-headed creature, he took greater pride in some of his
other works  from "Show Boat" to the personal paintings and
sketches that blanketed the walls of his home in Pacific
Palisades.
Of greater significance, the relationship between creator and
created is far more complicated than that of parent and child, a
fact which "Gods and Monsters" acknowledges with poignancy and
style.
After suffering a series of strokes which leave him physically
and intellectually unharmed, Whale (McKellen) finds himself
involuntarily flashing back to his days in the trenches during WWI
and the making of his most infamous feature. When Whale asks his
strapping  and straight  gardener to pose for a
portrait, Clay Boone (Fraser) becomes an unwitting witness to the
old man’s ruminations.
The sparsely peopled drama owes its brilliance largely to its
leading men. An ever-versatile McKellen plays Whale as alternately
charismatic and witty, and needy and vulnerable.
Fraser has far fewer lines, but his reactions to Whale’s stories
and advances lend depth to a potentially unreadable character. His
face contorts cathartically as he attempts to reconcile his 1950s
machismo with his friendship with an openly gay man and his blue
collar life with an intense, if vague, desire for something
glamorous, dramatic and even philosophical.
The resulting relationship is a fragile blend of artist and
muse, teacher and pupil, pursuer and desired. Taking a cue from his
own films, Whale tries to bring out the monster in Boone, hoping an
unsolicited kiss will end his dwindling life. Perhaps his most
painful discovery, however, is that life is not like the movies.
His "monster" refuses to fall into a thuggish stereotype without a
fight.
Present throughout the dark, dreamy, but ultimately human tale
are repeated dashes of metadrama and nods to past movies (namely
"The Bride of Frankenstein" and "Sunset Boulevard"), as is
appropriate to a movie about a filmmaker. Director Condon resists
the urge to incorporate dark, stormy nights and exaggerated dream
sequences, instead honoring his predecessors with the same subtlety
and respect that Whale gave Mary Shelley and Bram gave Whale.
An unnecessary if well-done epilogue brings "Gods and Monsters"
to an industry ending, but the film would have benefitted from the
novel’s spicy anecdotes from Hollywood past.
But gripping and even humorous (Whale introduces Boone to
Princess Margaret: "He’s never met a princess before, only
queens"), "Gods and Monsters" gives hauntingly beautiful meaning to
the phrase "created a monster."
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