Retired filmmaker James Whale (Ian McKellen, in an immanently watchable performance) invites his gardener, a young ex-Marine named Clay Boone (Brendan Fraser), into the drawing room for drinks and cigars. The scene purposely recalls the one from Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein in which Karloff's Creature accepts a lonely blind man's hospitality only to ruin a tranquil moment by erupting at the sight of an open flame (he fears fire). Likewise, hulky Clay cuts short his time with Whale when the director's flaming homosexuality begins to disgust him. "Same difference..." James tells Clay, "Fear and disgust. All part of the same great gulf that stands between us."

Whale is not blind, but he does walk around in a haze of daydreams and fragmented memories and olfactory hallucinations, all side effects of a stroke. Clay is like Frankenstein's monster in that he resists the notion of having a master--contrary to his namesake, the groundskeeper is not Whale's to mold. Gods and Monsters is about an old man who is no longer capable of seduction.

Bill Condon's film is based on Christopher Bram's speculative novel; there was no Clayton Boone, but there was certainly a James Whale, and he did live his final years tucked away inside a cozy California estate. Hollywood never officially ostracized him (there were too many gay players for that to happen), but his flamboyant lifestyle was frowned-upon by such famous--and famously closeted--bigwigs as the preeminent director George Cukor. James becomes a shut-in of sorts because he can't stomach being an outsider in a room full of outsiders.

Gods and Monsters doesn't move forward like most movies, but neither is it inert. It's a fictionalized account of Whale's final days, which were not documented and remain a Sunset Blvd.-style mystery. In this story, Whale has a German maid named Hannah played by an unrecognizable Lynn Redgrave; typical of the film's reductive borrowing of the Universal horror aesthetic for Whale's own, Hannah is a gothic fabrication, if a decent one. She's movie-Whale's surrogate wife, taking care of him because, in her own words, "A man who is not married has nothing."

This is a smart picture, if not a brilliant one. The invented aspects of the story are never as interesting as those we know to be true. Clay types are a convention of porn: the beefcake in the garden whose function is that of an erotic lawn ornament. For a movie frequently awash in clever dialogue and situations (see: the brilliant strip-poker interview), Clay seems disappointingly trite. I kept waiting for this cipher to transcend his metaphorical status, but Fraser--in scenes without McKellen, especially--could be plugged into any old biopic.

Late in the film, buff Clay accompanies Whale to a Cukor party, and Cukor looks on enviously at this pseudo-couple, according to plan. Later at that same party, Whale finds himself alone, with Clay off on a beer hunt and actor David Lewis (David Dukes) angrily trying to find out who invited his ex-lover. At this point, in another visual reference to his Frankenstein pictures, Whale is compelled to examine some roses: to stare at them, to touch them, to smell them. McKellen is terrific here, investing his alter ego with a last vestige of dignity--although what we come to feel for Whale is, for better or worse, pity.

Gods and Monsters received multiple Academy Award nominations and won one, for Best Screenplay Adaptation; Universal responded by bumping up the scheduled plain-Jane disc to Collector's Edition status. I'll discuss its bonus features in a moment. The (16x9 enhanced, letterboxed 2.35:1) video on this DVD is phenomenal: Stephen M. Katz's cinematography is lush--even its interiors appear to have been shot in the English countryside. The first few minutes of the transfer, during the opening credits, are not crisp, but once we're safe and sound in Whale's cocoon, the often-verdant image is breathtaking. I noticed infrequent haloing on faces during periods of strong light, but such is NTSC. Nighttime scenes remain sharp and colourful, with deep contrast.

I wish I could similarly praise the audio beyond Carter Burwell's Franz Waxman-esque score--it's a boring mix with no low end to speak of. (Sadly, the Universal promotional short that starts up automatically when one inserts the disc has bass to spare.) The only optional soundtrack is 2.0 Dolby Surround (technically 4.0) and it's well-recorded in terms of dialogue and balance, but the rears kick in only to handle thunder or music.

There are two noteworthy extras on this disc, not counting the theatrical trailer. Clive Barker, who produced the film, narrates a refreshing 28-minute doc that's closer to a retrospective of Whale's career than is "The Making Of" Gods and Monsters, while the other supplement is a director's commentary. Condon is animated and expresses his enthusiasm for DVD early on; his mind, like McKellen's James Whale, is thinking a thousand things per minute, but once the listener settles into his tangential patter, he's a delight. Note that the Canadian release from Columbia Tri-Star is identical to the U.S. import (right down to the silkscreened vitals on the platter itself), save cover logos.-Bill Chambers

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
105 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.35:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English Dolby Surround
CC
No
Subtitles
English
DVD-9
Region One
Lion's Gate/Columbia Tri-Star

the critic

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Published: June, 1999