The story of Gods and Monsters concerns James Whale (Ian McKellan) not during his time as a Hollywood filmmaker but in the years afterward. Residing in a lovely home in Europe in the 1950s, Whale spends his days painting, flirting with guys that catch his fancy and sparring with his maid Hanna (Lynn Redgrave). While he puts on confident airs, Whale has recently suffered strokes that have started his mind on a gradual path towards deterioration. Whale is being slowly killed and he gets constant reminders of his long-term demise thanks to recurring flashbacks (caused by his strokes) to his anguish-ridden past. Some escape is found in his conversations with his gardener, Clayton Boone (Brendan Fraser), though both are struggling to ascertain what they want from one another.
When making movies about famous artists, it's easy to get lost in what these artists made rather than who these artists were. How many music biopics have we seen that eschewed compelling drama in favor of cornball explanations for where the titles of famous songs came from? In the case of Gods and Monsters, Bill Condon opts for much smarter storytelling. For one thing, Condon focuses on one slice of Whale's life rather than condense an entire existence into two hours. This is something I always appreciate in a biopic but it especially works well in this specific context. We get glimpses into Whale's past as a child in an abusive household and as a soldier, but only whenever Whale has a vision to the past beyond his control.
Condon only engages with the past as a way of reinforcing Whale's declining health while trapping the viewer in the 1950s reflects how Whale cannot escape his current health predicament. Centering Gods and Monsters on only one passage of Whale's life also allows for the friendship between James Whale and Clayton Boone to be explored in an in-depth fashion. The way Condon constantly keeps the audience on their toes in regards to where exactly this pairing is going (Is it somewhere romantic? Somewhere antagonistic? Somewhere more complex?) is tremendously riveting. Fraser and McKellan are heavily responsible for this absorbing quality in the way they convey a sense of uncertainty in their performances.
That's the other great part of Gods and Monsters, you get to see two great lead performances, including one that allows Brendan Fraser a chance to shine in a dramatic performance. I've always been a Brendan Fraser stan and even I was impressed with Fraser's work in the part of Clayton Boone. He manages to hold his own in scenes where he plays opposite Ian McKellan while he also nicely & subtly depicts how Boone is wrapped up in uncertainty while navigating this new friendship. The cherry on top of this wonderful performance is the way Fraser delivers his crucial line of "I am not your monster" to McKellan's Whale in the climax of Gods and Monsters. Just the way Fraser delivers each of those words suggests so much about how Boone views himself, it's a terrific piece of acting.
Delivering similarly superb work is the always reliable Ian McKellan. If McKellan could deliver moments of authentic wistful humanity in his performance as Gus the Theater Cat in Cats then it shouldn't be a shock to see him deliver stirring work as James Whale. McKellan proves to be a delight in delivering the memorable dialogue in Condon's script ("We are not sugar cubes, we won't melt!" is an excellently-realized retort) but the way McKellan manifests the haunted and tortured sides of James Whale are most impressive of all. Also making the characters digressions into the past work as well as they do is consistently thoughtful editing from Virginia Katz. Her work ensures Whale's recurring unexpected voyages to the past have both a bittersweet & haunting quality to them. Such qualities are rooted in richly compelling character details that Gods and Monsters conjures up on its own rather than going the easy route of simply relying on the well-known nature of Bride of Frankenstein to carry its drama.
After this movie, I genuinely would be interested in seeing what Bill Condon's cancelled Bride of Frankenstein remake would have looked like. Maybe the Dark Universe could be salvaged yet...
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