The monstrous works of James Whale

 By SCOTT FOUNDAS
Film Editor

Fame is that most tricky beast of false pleasure and happiness, luring its unsuspecting victims in with feigned promises of a better life and temporary charms that obscure painful past. Fame takes many prisoners and leaves few unaffected in its wake, abandoning its own hopeful subjects without even considering its destructive power. Bill Condon's "Gods and Monsters" understands the allure of fame, the fragility of success and the fading of dreams as well as any movie ever made on the subject, and that Condon's film is one of the great, lustful odes to fractured Hollywood glamour and decadence accounts for but a fraction of its seductive power.
Adapted by Condon from Christopher Bram's novel "Father of Frankenstein," "Gods and Monsters" imaginatively reconstructs the last days of famed Universal horror director James Whale (Ian McKellen), who in 1957 was found floating in the swimming pool of his Pacific Palisades home under mysterious circumstances later deemed to have been suicide.
Noted for creating both the original "Frankenstein" and subsequent "Bride of Frankenstein," but bitter and unforgiving about his time spent in Hollywood, Whale lives out his days in modest comfortability and rapidly deteriorating health, accessible to few people outside of his tireless housemaid, Hanna (a lovely Lynn Redgrave, who deservingly gets a lot more attention paid to her than such characters usually do). Suffering from the side effects of a mild stroke, Whale's mind has become a tempestuous battlefield of haunting memories from a life lived among much tragedy and lack of self-fulfillment. As he bides his time, waiting for death as one might wait out the arrival of an old, dear friend, time and space wash over him in a searing atonal symphony.
Like his contemporary George Cukor, Whale is one of Tinseltown's rogue homosexual directors, his promiscuity known to those in the business but kept quiet and hidden as such scandalous facts always were. Now, weakened with age, he can no longer pursue young boys with his former vigor, even if he can never suppress his desire. Returning from a hospital stay, Whale is instantly drawn to Clayton (Brendan Fraser), a new gardener employed by Hanna during Whale's absence. Boyishly handsome and rigidly muscular, Clayton trances Whale with his physical attributes and the nonchalant air of youth. In a roundabout way, Whale hits on him - hoping, yet doubtful that he too is gay - only to find the naive Clay's oblivious to his advances.
Still, Whale asks Clay to pose for one of his sketches, to which he willingly consents. Curious about his reclusive employer, the young gardener begins asking about what he used to do and whether or not he was famous. Though reluctant to revisit the past, Whale cannot deny that the past has chosen to revisit him. Perhaps as a result of the stroke, his medication, or because Clay has entered his life for a purpose, Whale is flooded with reminiscences of his own childhood, his time spent fighting in World War I and the glory days of making movies for Carl Laemmle, surrounded by friends and at the height of his creative powers. Now, his former self but a memory, Whale cannot even bring himself to draw, but as much as he yearns to deny it - to shut up his recollections of a happier and healthier time - his eyes reveal his intense passion for filmmaking. He confesses, "Making movies is the most wonderful thing in the world."
So, Whale and Clay develop a curious codependency and attraction for each other. For Clay, it is not built on sexual desire, but rather by a sense that Whale has made something meaningful of his life much in the way that he himself desires to. Whale's stories move and intrigue the young man, while for the director it is Clay's ability to mind that tantalizes him even more than sex appeal. Their bond together makes for a friendship greater than physical love. Like the lovers in Christopher Hampton's "Carrington," Whale and Clay are, on some fundamental level, soul mates.
However, Whale is ultimately inconsolable in the grief and anger he feels over his wretched physical condition and the joy he feels eluded him in life. He believes he has lived only half an existence, the rest stolen out from under him unexpectedly. As his condition worsens and his psychological anguish intensifies, he alienates the last few people who are close to him, placing enormous strain on his relationships with Hanna and Clay. In slow, almost imperceptible doses, Condon masterfully builds tension until the inner frenzy of Whale's mind reaches a final boiling point. Then, with jolting force, he takes us inside Whale's furious psyche, so that we can see what he sees and understand his pain.
Every step of the way, Condon's sure-footed and adventurous direction is precisely matched by the sublime McKellen, whose inspired interpretation of Whale makes for one of the most indelible screen characters in McKellen's astonishing litany. He is an actor of rare gifts, and here he has fully invested himself in the creation of Whale as a tragic romanticist for the ages. There's hardly a glance or gesture employed by McKellen that doesn't resonate with wistful longing for a time long since past, and there's a heartbreaking sweetness in the way he looks affectionately at Elsa Lanchester in a TV airing of "Bride of Frankenstein" and proclaims aloud, "Beautiful!"
As easily as he inhabited the icy precision of the aging Nazi in this year's "Apt Pupil," McKellen gets under Whale's skin and wears it with his own chameleonlike personality. In the film's most haunting sequence, Whale emerges from seclusion to attend a party thrown by George Cukor and is there reunited with the stars of "Bride," Lanchester and Boris Karloff. As the stars approach, putting on their best cheery Hollywood facades, Whale is confronted with the ghosts of the past he has striven to forget. And McKellen lets himself go, collapsing physically and emotionally into the nervous shell of a man who once rode the crest of an addictively powerful wave. There's a shattering, childlike quality to McKellen in that moment, as Whale, in the presence of his own monsters, is overcome by demons of a far more personal nature.
As Clay, Fraser also impresses, effectively bringing a layered sensitivity to a character that beckons to be played as a clueless buffoon. He and McKellen have an essential chemistry together that is the propulsive engine of "Gods and Monsters." It's a shame when Condon fleetingly trails off into an irrelevant subplot involving Clay and a touch-and-go romance with a local barmaid (Lolita Davidovich). That breaks our rapt attention for a moment, and Condon loses his hold over us in the process. There's also a tacked-on feel-good ending with Clay that doesn't quite work.
By and large, though, Condon doesn't play any of "Gods and Monsters" to be cute, and the result is an impressively affecting study of the pull of the subconscious, the desultory nature of memory, the beauty of the male body, the horror of love lost and the despair of aging. That's a lot of thematic weight for any movie to pull, but Condon stays tightly focused on his central relationship almost all the way through, and a wealth of subtext springs from his intensive devotion. Whale longs for his former fame not just for the sake of celebrity, but for the freedom of mind and body he associates with it. Now, he has become a prisoner of his own self, consumed by only the disappointments and failures in a life of many triumphs.
Condon draws rich parallels between Whale's own outsider existence and the story of his most famous horror creation (scenes from both "Frankenstein" films are recreated with loving authenticity), but more so "Gods and Monsters" is a celebration of a life lived with the capacity of bringing more joy to others than it could ever find in itself. Condon sees Whale as his own most misunderstood misfit, and is therefore remarkably compassionate in his understanding of Whale's final, intimate association with death.

Copyright 1998 by the Daily Trojan. All rights reserved.
This article was published in Vol. 135, No. 44 (Wednesday, November 4, 1998), beginning on page 7 and ending on page 10.