Gods and Monsters

The source is Christopher Bram's 1995 novel Father of Frankenstein, adapted by Bill Condon, who won the Adapted Screenplay Oscar for it. The subject is the last days of James Whale, who directed Frankenstein. Whale was real: a First World War veteran, an Englishman who lived openly as a gay man, and Hollywood's best-known horror director of the 1930s. As the film opens he has had a stroke, his memory is coming apart, and the war is returning to him. His gardener, Clayton Boone, is an invention; Bram created the character for the novel. The relationship between the two men is not sexual and will not become so; the point is that Whale has found someone to talk to, while Boone is trying to work out what he is listening to. Ian McKellen plays Whale, Brendan Fraser plays Boone and Lynn Redgrave plays the household's severe Hungarian housekeeper. Who it is for: viewers who like Hollywood history and quiet drama about age, memory and sexual identity. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a biography of Whale's filmography. It happens almost entirely inside one house and barely enters his career.