Gods and Monsters<> James Whale is best remembered for writing and directing the 1931Frankenstein<> and its sequel, 1935's Bride of Frankenstein<>. Ingenious, eerie, and great fun, these two films reinvented cinematic horror, imbuing it with a twisty combination of tragedy, dark humor, and existentialist camp that persists in the genre to this day. Before Psycho<>, Halloween<>, and Scream<>, before Hitchcock, John Carpenter, Kenneth Branagh, and Kevin Williamson, there was James Whale. Contracted to Universal and allowed unusual creative control by the visionary Carl Laemmle, Jr., the British-born, one-time stage actor Whale also made The Invisible Man<> (1933) and Showboat<> (1936), among other films. But it is the Frankensteins<> that sealed his fate and legend: he was forever after associated with his version of the man-made monster, stitched together and lumbering, desperately looking for intimacy but finding only revulsion and ridicule. Whale enjoyed a full and vital life, but was troubled during his later years by the after-effects of a stroke, nightmares, and moments of waking confusion. It's this difficult time -- specifically the last few months in his elegant Pacific Palisades home -- that is the focus of Bill Condon's delicately perceptive and affecting Gods and Monsters<>. Based on Christopher Bram's novel, Father of Frankenstein<>, the film portrays Whale (Ian McKellan) as exquisitely aristocratic and self-absorbed, cantankerous and utterly charming. His gayness, certainly no secret during Whale's lifetime, is a source of both pleasure and suffering (rumors linger to this day that his death -- he was discovered floating in his swimming pool in late May, 1957 -- was the result of a love affair "gone wrong,'' though it was officially deemed a suicide). Never shy about his appetites, Whale was also ever mindful of his manners; in the film he is haunted by memories of his working class childhood, he constructed and maintained a patrician air throughout his days in Hollywood. Gods and Monsters<> begins by laying out the particulars of Whale's life in 1957. Alone since the departure of his companion of twenty-some years, Whale busies himself with painting and tormenting his dedicated housekeeper, Hanna (a deftly comic Lynn Redgrave, inspired in part by Una O'Connor's quirky, generous performances in Bride<> and Invisible Man<>). She's able to monitor his medication and diet easily enough, but has her hands full trying to restrain his sexual shenanigans, as the old man has an eye for pretty boys. The film opens on a delicate morning in late spring, as Whale convinces a lanky college reporter to strip, one item of clothing per answer. He gets so excited that he faints, and the kid must summon Hanna in a panic (and in his underwear). She arrives on the scene with plenty of time to dispense pills and reprimands. It's plain that Hanna endures such silliness because she genuinely loves Whale, for his kindness and vulnerability as much as for his vexing idiosyncrasies. And the film allows us to see him as she might, a puzzle, paradoxical and seductive. He's revealed gradually -- as a kind of puzzle to be cherished rather than solved -- through flashbacks showing his quiet love for a soldier he knew during WWI, his anxious childhood in a gray industrial town, and his on-set confidence during the Bride<> shoot, as well as through present-day hallucinations suggesting his dread of death, loss of self-control, and disgrace (he was especially concerned that he only be remembered as the man who made Frankenstein<>). Into this maelstrom of middle-aged fears and desires steps a well-muscled gardener named Boone (Brandon Frasier), an ex-Marine with a wife-beater t-shirt, tattoo, and incipient intellectual and artistic curiosity. Moreover, Frasier/Boone has a perfectly shaped jar-head -- visible especially in silhouette, shrewdly used during some nightmare sequences that make Whale and Boone into versions of Colin Clive as the doctor and Karloff as the monster, lurching across a stormy horizon. Boone and Whale strike up a tenuous friendship that grows stronger as each begins to appreciate the other's difference from himself. And the movie uses these differences -- in age, class, and sexuality -- to investigate the nature of intimacy, what makes it scary and fascinating, monstrous and divine. At first Boone is alarmed at Whale's flirtations, anxious when asked to remove his shirt while posing for a portrait and testy when the conversation turns to topics remotely personal. Boone considers himself to be a regular guy: he hangs around the local bar and has a sometime-girlfriend (Lolita Davidovich). But he's also intrigued by Whale's obvious erudition and gentleness, not to mention his interest in Boone. Eventually, he invites his drinking buddies to watch Bride<> with him at the bar one night: they're quickly bored with the movie's bizarre mix of surreal comedy and B-movie tactics, but Boone is mesmerized, suddenly awakened to a whole new world of nuance and indirection, sincerity and self-consciousness. Whale, meanwhile, is moved by the young man's generosity and they begin to experiment with the limits of their friendship. Together they crash a hoity-toity garden party, where Whale gleefully confronts his ex, with the luscious Boone as his companion. The two men share these social and spiritual adventures, learning more about one another and themselves. Resisting the temptation to deify or demonize, Gods and Monsters<> maintains a thoughtful compassion toward its imperfect principals. Like Whale's own Frankenstein<> movies, it doesn't judge or preach. It reflects, imagines, conjures, then respects its audience enough to let us see in it our own monsters and gods, as we might.