For another, because writer-director Bill Condon, who based his film on the speculative novel by Christopher Bram, has created a lyrical film about a prickly subject: a gay man who in his senescence confuses himself with Dr. Frankenstein and his hunky straight gardener (Brendan Fraser) with the mad doctor's hulking creation.
Made with the dark mood and light wit that distinguishes Whale films from other Hollywood Gothics, Gods and Monsters has a lot on its menu. Among the questions it wryly asks are how gay and nongay people can forge a relationship not based on seduction and sex, how to live with elan and die with dignity, and whether in a deeply homophobic society it is less soul-destroying to be out of the closet than in.
Not that Gods and Monsters answers the questions definitively. It throws them in the air, juggles them, drops them, and watches as they bounce unpredictably across the Hollywood patio.
With his insinuating voice and teasing manner, McKellen is the master juggler - like his character, he is outrageous without outraging. Whale, who was born in Britain and shaped by his experiences in the trenches during World War I, was a working-class kid with an artistic gift, and McKellen plays the plebeian who would be patrician to the hilt, if not the armpits.
Most of the drama unfolds in Whale's gracious home, where he is tended by his Polish housekeeper, Hanna. She is played by Lynn Redgrave, looking as though she's sucked one lemon too many, and her fierce protectiveness of ``Meester Jeemy'' and fiercer disapproval of his sexuality is, like McKellen's performance, seriously funny.
