Riveting

I started this film determined to dislike it. I don't like Ian Mckellen, which is hard, therefore, to watch a film that centres on that kind of camp, queer role he plays so well. How wrong I was. He is excellent in this film. An aging ex-Hollywood director, he is living his life on his memories - literally as, recovering from a stroke, his brain is firing off with vivid hallucinations of his past. He lusts after young men, and this lust leads him to become friendly with the young ex-marine gardener. Am apparently trite plot then takes an unexpected twist. People are not who they appear to be. Great goodness can be hidden beneath the most unlikely of exteriors. And that is the whole metaphor of the film and the meaning behind the title, as the elderly director, played by Mckellen, is James Whale, who made Frankenstein. Who is the God, who is the monster? A really good, thought-provoking movie.