Gods and Monsters (DVD, 2003)

Sir Ian McKellen gives perhaps his finest film performance playing mid-20th century director James Whale, whose famous pictures are Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and Show Boat. Even though I was well aware that Lynn Redgrave was also starring in the the film, I honestly couldn't find her, though she was in the first scenes of the show! What I'm saying is that her performance as Whale's German Christian maid is so dynamic I didn't even recognize her.

What in the world the AFI was thinking by awarding Dame Judi Dench an Oscar for an 8 minute performance over Lynn Redgrave's stunning lead as Hannnah is beyond my imagination!

Whale & Hannah are living together in near seclusion on Whale's Southern California estate in 1957. Whale has had "a touch of stroke" (great script) & suffers from memory loss, WWI flashbacks, headaches, fainting spells & "a storm in his brain." Thus, he is not simply an older gentlemen, but also one with disabilities that severely limit his social activities.

Though Hollywood has forgotten him, Whale has little to do but try to recall his colorful past, many man loves, including traumatic ones from WWI. This already heavy plot thickens to high drama when Whale glances out of his sunroom window & spots his hunk of a gardener, Clay (Brendan Fraser).

Hannah doesn't approve of "Mister Jimmy's films" because they are not her "tea of cup," or of his "worst sin of all" for which "his soul will be damned to eternal hell," according to her antiquated, religiously violent values. Coming from Redgrave, Hannah's values are conveyed with near satire. Her script & character are performed superbly. So when Hannah catches Mister Jimmy making several outdoor contacts with Clay, inviting him in for cold tea, when he has nothing else social to do; then hiring him to do more than garden--posing for him so that Whale can paint his "marvelously shaped head" (which is shaped like Frankenstein's)--it is the start of a tense platonic friendship between the two men, but more of a hysterically funny struggle with Hannah's slights of anti-gay bias. Hannah thinks the worst of it; that the two men are having a gay affair; but, Clay emphatically denies that, much to Hannah's comical religious relief. Lynn Redgrave has never been so funny while not being true herself. She was robbed on the Best Leading Actress Oscar & that's a well known popular sentiment.

In fact, all three of their relationships, the one between Hannah & Mister Jimmy, is like a long term marriage; the one between Mr. Whale & Clay is a work relationship constantly tested by Whale's deliberately flirtatious gestures & overtly queer rememberances & remarks to Clay. it? Why does the much older dying gay man come on to a younger straight guy? I keep asking myself throughout the film. This question turns out to be the film's height of surprise of a theme.

The viewer is repeatedly led to believe, through McKellen's excellent performance as an older lonely gay man, that he really is after Clay sexually, though he verbally denies it. Therein lies an expertly strung thread of tension throughout the show.

The film is based upon Christopher Bram's novel "Father Of Frankenstein," but with stars like McKellen & Redgrave, both nominated for Oscars & snubbed; add Fraser & this film rightfully earned an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay that far out does the novel. McKellen & Redgrave were both robbed of earned Oscars probably because of homophobia~