Writer-director Bill Condon adapts Christopher Bram's novel Father of Frankenstein, a fictionalized account of Whale's final days. Ian McKellen (in a career-defining performance) plays Whale, living alone in a posh Beverly Hills estate, recovering from a stroke that has left his brain unprotected from a torrent of memories, and worrying his German maid (Lynn Redgrave) with his "decadent" lifestyle. Brendan Fraser plays Whale's gardener Clay, whom Whale invites to model for some sketches. The director uses the gardener as a sounding board for his life story, and as an object for his benign lust. The gardener covets the director's affluence but is alternately repelled and fascinated by his love life--Whale is the first homosexual Clay has ever met.

Gods & Monsters has the structure of tragedy, but it fails to impress us with any real weight: Whale's life simply wasn't grand enough--or, ultimately, pathetic enough. But Condon's film is remarkable in more subtle ways, especially in the way it shows how an artist's life bleeds into his work, sometimes literally. Whale's memories of growing up poor but putting on airs, of fighting in World War I, and of the awkwardness he felt as a gay man looking for companionship all play out in the gruesome flailings of Frankenstein's monster.