Gods and Monsters
Originally written: October 1999
Most of my other favourites of the 1990s have been in the crime/mystery genre. Three serious and three less serious efforts stand out: Heat, The Usual Suspects and The Shawshank Redemption in one corner and Get Shorty, Out of Sight and Grosse Point Blank in the other. And LA Confidential wasn't far behind.
I might go into more detail about why these movies are favourites some other time. Elsewhere I have said that Heat is probably the best film of the 90s not even to get an Oscar nomination. I have written a fair deal about some recent films in the movie section of this website.
The 1990s have actually produced a couple of excellent SF movies, Groundhog Day and The Truman Show, and two fantasies which are almost as good, Truly Madly Deeply (just about the best ghost story ever) and The Fisher King. One 'related' movie which should have been up for Hugos this year, but which was neglected, is the best movie I have seen so far this year.
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Gods and Monsters is a speculation on the last days of director James Whale, whose seminal films, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, established the horror genre (and comedic horror sub-genre) of talking pictures. This is a brilliantly written three-hander with Ian McKellen outstanding as Whale. How that Italian clown was given the Academy Award ahead of this performance I have no idea? He imbues Whale with dignity, while still revealing the bitterness and, in a sense, immaturity that is within him. Given his outstanding performance in Richard III and his standing within the British Theatre, McKellen's performance is not a great surprise. The most revealing performance is that of Brendan Fraser, who shucks off the grossness of his usual comic mugging (great in George of the Jungle, for example) and gives a character reading of some depth to the young gardener pulled into Whale's orbit in the last days of his life. Lyn Redgrave is the third performer of note, playing the housekeeper with an accent borrowed from Ingrid Bergmann's role in Murder on the Orient Express. But the performance has an interesting physical side to it as well, balancing the housekeeper's distaste and love for Whale.
The film is based on a very good script, written by the director, Bill Condon, which draws together known facts of Whale's death, and the lifestyle he enjoyed in his exile from the film-making community. His openly gay life, a reflection of McKellen's own openly gay existence, a rarity among lead actors where closets hold much more than clothing (who, outside the demi-monde, knew Cary Grant and Randolph Scott were a couple?), was the spring from which much of the speculation springs. Fraser's character has his own contradictions and complications, so much of the plot develops around the mutual discoveries of the two leads.
If you haven't seen Gods and Monsters, it's a movie, based on words, characters and acting, not special effects, I thoroughly recommend.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]