James Whale, the legendary director of horror classics such as Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein, was found dead on the bottom of his swimming pool in 1957 ‘in mysterious circumstances’. The surprising biopic Gods and Monsters is set in the last few years of Whale’s life that he spent sick, forgotten and lonely. Whale, a wonderful role by Ian McKellen (Richard III), is a fragile and isolated man, who lives with his housekeeper. He is running out of strength and has just returned from hospital after a stroke. The arrival of a new gardener awakens his lastvestiges of life. This muscular gardener, Clayton, is however on his guard and a strange cat-and-mouse game ensues between the openly gay Whale and the obviously heterosexual Clayton. The gardener – maybe even literally – brings Whale liberation from a life that is in danger of losing its dignity. His spirit, wracked by disease, remembers his youth in England, scenes from films that made him famous and the love he lost in the First World War. These are waves that make him bob round within and beyond reality. Whale’s roaming spirit gives the film a special narrative structure. Some scenes bring the Expressionist qualities of Whale’s films back to life. God and Monsters is both an intimate portrait and an imaginative fantasy.
