Word: whaled
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...worry. He'll be back before you knowit.Ian McKellen, Gods and Monsters: Sir Iancomes from a prestigious tradition of Londontheater and film, and has firmly establishedhimself Stateside as one of the top Shakespeareanactors--a master of his craft. His performance inGods and Monsters, as the aging, gayfilmmaker James Whale, was superb. But like Nolte,he may suffer due to the film's low profile. Don'tcount McKellen out, though. The Academy'spreferences often tend toward older, establishedactors...
...matters both of substance ("There is no excuse for perjury. Never, never, never") and style (Starr confessed to having seen "any number of" R-rated movies), the special prosecutor was practicing the sort of age-of-Oprah personality politics of which his nemesis Bill Clinton, that great white whale of a President, is master. Not only is this ethically dubious on Starr's part; it's stupid: Would Ahab challenge Moby Dick to a swim meet? Would Leon Jaworski...
There are, thankfully, some notable exceptions in Gods and Monsters, namely Whale's dreams and flashbacks. The former have him in his own movies, playing the Doctor Frankenstein to Boone's Monster and vice versa. Shot in retrospective monochrome, the film here manages to capture the beauty of Whale's movies without distracting the viewer from the matter at hand--Whale and Boone's increasingly complex relationship. Similarly, the flashbacks to the war, and to Whale's wistful memories of "love in the foxholes," are masterfully done. Alas, these all have the ulterior motive of emphasizing the film's already...
...movies aside, Gods and Monsters is undoubtedly worth seeing, perhaps worth seeing twice. It is without doubt the most human film to have come out this season. That is to say, it concerns itself not with explosions, but with people. There is a certain Lolita-esque aspect to Whale's pursuit of Boone--the degenerate European going after the ingenue American--but this is balanced by the film's ultimately sympathetic portrayal of both characters. There's something worthwhile in the tension between a film dealing with homosexual love and a heterosexual audience member: unable to rely on the stock...
...conclusion of the film, the audience mourns for Whale because McKellen and this film have made out of the man--aging, bitter, out of favor with Hollywood--an endearing figure. Stepping outside of the theater, though, one cannot help but mourn for the real James Whale, for the days when a director could make a movie out of a Mary Shelley novel--not for the prestige granted to recent film adaptations of Henry James, but for the quality of a swift story, of one that engages intellectually, emotionally and viscerally. And for the spectacle of a monster given life...