Set 20 years after Whale's heyday, the film finds the director and the industry he served well beyond their prime. In a performance of enormous complexity and nuance, emotions seem to race across McKellen's face like hurrying clouds.
Ian McKellen, who shares quite a lot with the openly gay, gracious Englishman, resurrects Whale with a flair and wit the director surely would have relished.
A fascinating account of his final days, the drama draws on the speculative novel by Christopher Bram, Whale's campy films, Hollywood legend and the mythical man himself. James Whale, the father of such '30s fright classics as 'Frankenstein,' looks back upon his creations in 'Gods and Monsters,' a moving portrait of the artist as an old man.
