Killers of the Flower Moon

Coyote Ugly: The Curse of the Pierce Arrow

or

The Conformist of the Plains

 

David Grann's output of articles and books has provided fodder for lots of movies: The Lost City of Z, Dark Crimes, The Old Man and The Gun, Trial By Fire, and now Killers of the Flower Moon (with its director, Scorsese's next film to be based on Grann's latest book "The Wager"). Grann wrote his book about a moment of long forgotten history—The Osage Indian Murder Case, what the newspapers at the time called "The Reign of Terror" from 1918 to 1931. It was one of the first murder cases taken over and solved by the nascent Bureau of Investigation, what would soon become acronymed as the FBI, an attempt to coordinate crime data into a national data resource that could be shared amidst the disparate state jurisdictions and law enforcement agencies. 

Grann's book is a fine read—it spent 49 weeks on the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list—breaking down the story into three narratives: of Mollie Burkhart (played in the film by Lily Gladstone) of the Osage Tribe, who saw three of her sisters and her mother die (under suspicious or downright murderous circumstances) in a short space of a few years; of Tom White (played in the film by Jesse Plemons), a former Texas Ranger, recruited by the Bureau to investigate the murders—his unique way of assembling a team and having them blend in with the community was a bit unpracticed, but did lead to convictions; and a modern post-investigation appraisal. When Martin Scorsese announced it for his next movie with Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio

starring it was originally just going to focus on the FBI investigation with DiCaprio as White.But DiCaprio had other ideas—he wanted to play "a villain" and so the film was re-tooled by Scorsese and Eric Roth to feature more of the role of Ernest Burkhart, husband of Mollie and his role in the web of deceit and murders...all to obtain the headrights (the land mineral rights owned by full-blooded Osage tribe-members) to their oil-rich pocket of Oklahoma, that made the Osage "the wealthiest people per capita" in the nation. The Osage became prosperous with their oil stipend, creating a power dynamic where they ostensibly ran things in Fairfax, Oklahoma, but they were also targets for any scam and flim-flam the other residents could concoct in order to benefit from their prosperity.

And that included marrying into the money, the oldest way for profligate men to get a sustainable nest-egg and not waste it all in a short period of time. If there's children, then there's always inheritance, or better yet, the idealistically labeled "trust-fund," that can be exploited as long as no one is following the trail of money. In Fairfax, Oklahoma, the trail was not only monetary, but one merely had to trace family ties and the obituary column to see that something was surfacing besides oil.

Clocking in at a back-breaking 3 hours 20 minutes, Killers of the Flower Moon begins where most Scorsese movies do, following the bad guys. Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio) exits the train to Fairfax after serving in the First World War and receives a warm welcome from his uncle, cattleman William Hale (De Niro), who is perfectly agreeable to taking Ernest under his wing, despite his lack of experience. Under an avuncular pretense, Hale gives his nephew the lay of the land, giving him a book on the Osage people ("Do you read?") and asking pointed questions about his taste in women. Hale speaks the Osage language and extends his avuncular charm to express support for the Native land-owners, especially dealing with the white city officials, the police and Sheriff, the local doctors, even the undertaker (that'll come in handy!). He also is quite familiar with the local underworld (even handier!), and his network makes him less than a town father, and more of a puppet-master.

Burkhart is his primary puppet, lending support to a romance between Ernest and Mollie Kyle (Underwood, who in her mandarin understated way, steals the show as well as hearts), who is already seeing signs of poor health in her family, who have a tendency towards diabetes. And when a "specialist" is needed for some special work to be done, Hale uses his nephew as a go-between, the better to keep his immaculate hands clean. 

But, the center cannot hold. In the community, the deaths become less and less isolated and more overt, culminating in a house-bombing that kills Mollie's sister and her husband, who has been asking questions and connecting dots, while resisting any overtures to share information with Ernest. That signs his death warrant and the egregiousness of the crime—the sheer audacity of it—mandates outside help. Private detectives had been hired before...but had disappeared never to be heard from again. A meeting between tribes leaders and President Calvin Coolidge allows Mollie to make an entreaty...and for once, the Great White Father keeps his word.

This is where Plemons' Tom White from the Bureau of Investigation comes into town from Washington, and it only takes a couple of inquiries to determine that he's being stone-walled...by everybody. Evidence goes missing, records disappear, stories are vague and sometimes conflicting. But White brings in some other agents with varying backgrounds to infiltrate the town and integrate themselves into both the White and Native communities. Then, they share information and find the links...and discrepancies. And they attack from within.

If the film has a fault in conception, it is in the sheer repetitiveness of the crimes (although, to be clear, the crimes DID happen as depicted and over that long period of time, which shows how frustratingly slow any shred of justice could be brought to so insular and complicit a community). But, the numbing volume of the crimes strains credulity and patience for an audience, even one used to the slow process of justice and the bull-headedness that passes for politics but stinks like conspiracy. Not to minimize the scope of the crimes, but to see every one of them played out through the machinations of Hale through the prevarifications of DiCaprio's Burkhart makes it a long stretch of the same thing repeated over and over.

Gladstone is the acting highlight of the film, and De Niro—although a bit too long in the tooth to be playing Hale—does a good turn as evil posing as the friendly neighbor.

DiCaprio, though, is an issue. Sure, he's good box-office (and he's an Executive Producer on the film), but it may be time for the long string of Scorsese collaborations to end. At times, one can see him using Brando tricks and an occasional Jack Nicholson strategy in his acting, but mostly he seems to have based his performance on a frowny-face emoji (😠). His face freezes into the same petulant scowl, no matter the circumstances, whether he's unhappy, concerned, frustrated, murderous or cornered. And, the deeper you get into the movie, the lower the corners of his mouth drop until you wonder if his jaw will just drop off once they carve far enough. It's a disappointing performance, considering how integral DiCaprio made himself to the film.

 

It may be time to kick him off the raft, Marty.

As his character is in the film, DiCaprio is the film's weakest link.

Still, Killers of the Flower Moon resonates, as one more early example of a nation's systemic racism hiding in the shadows and swept under the rug, something that, although denied in all corners of the continuing national reckoning, continues to raise its ugly head.

Ernest Burkhart, Mollie Kyle Burkhart (on the right), and William Hale,

The Whale (2022)

"I'm Sorry" (Repeat to ∞)

or

Marked "E" for Effort
 

Darren Aronofsky's latest film— an adaptation of the stage play "The Whale"—sits right in his wheel-house about subject matter, and could, in fact, be a thematic sequel to The Wrestler. Being stage-bound, however, the director does something unusual for him, by limiting it to a single set, and, for the most part, one room, shooting it in the restricting Academy ratio.

 

There's a practical reason for that; the subject of The Whale is Charlie (Brendan Fraser), an online writing course instructor living in Idaho, who is the only one participating in his ZOOM courses "without a working camera". The reason? Charlie is morbidly obese, to the point where he is rooted to his central couch, where he teaches, eats, watches TV (and porn). It's easier to just stay there, set in place, rather than reach for the walker (and the grabber so he doesn't have to bend down) and haul yourself, straining the entire way, in order to be upright and shuffle off to whatever duty needs to be performed. This is the burden he must bear, given how things are...and how he is. Best to restrict what you do to what you CAN do and what you can reach. One must also pre-plan and make sure one is not in a hurry...or the near-occasion of emergency.

But, it's all an emergency. Charlie's health issues are manifold: hypertension, congestive heart failure, and a BP of 238/134—when he looks up those numbers, he is taken to this site, which advises "seek immediate help and call 911." Not to mention the trouble breathing, the danger of choking, lack of oxygen, and a constant nagging cough that clears the lungs of fluid. The immobility weakens blood flow, can cause fluids to build up, and the legs to swell to the point where they crack and flake.

How could this happen, you ask? The Whale will spend its run-time telling you, through interactions with the few people who come to Charlie's unlocked door (it's too much trouble and strain to get up and unlock it). There's the missionary from "New Life", Thomas (Ty Simpkins), who is on rounds, walks in on Charlie and decides to make him his mission, help him find God before he dies, whether Charlie wants to or not. There's Charlie's caretaker (Hong Chau), who checks on him every day, begs him to go to a hospital (he won't, he doesn't want to spend the money which he says will bankrupt him), and suffers through his constant apologizing for making her life so difficult—she'll do it anyway, because her brother was Charlie's former lover (whom he left his family for ten years ago). She genuinely loves him and Charlie's health battles are her battles, but without the burden of weight.

Then, there's Ellie (Sadie Sink), his troubled 18 year old, struggling with school and with life. She understandably is bitter that Charlie is not a part of her life, that he abandoned her selfishly. She visits him because he's reached out to her—his health is bad and he violates the "no contact" rule of his divorce from his wife (Samantha Morton) to try to make some sort of amends to the kid. But, she's challenging. Quite literally. At their first meeting in years, she's stalking to the door and turns to Charlie to the couch and says "Walk to me." And it's an epic struggle, one he can't accomplish and ends up causing damage to the world-within-arm's-reach that he perpetually inhabits. There's cruelty to something so simple. But, for Charlie, it's like he's being asked to walk across the world.

So, how is the movie? Despite it being the most succinct and fish-bowlish of Aronofsky's films, he manages to invest a lot of world-building in it. And Brendan Fraser—here's a post of my only encounter with the man—is brilliant in it. The part could literally be a wallow. Encased in the most restricting make-up since The Elephant Man, he manages to make it a physical performance while maintaining eyes constantly clouded with regret.

But, for me, it was personal. Since my last day-job, I had been "care-taking" for a guy I'd met who became a friend. The man had a congenital hip problem, which made moving around very difficult and extremely painful; this last job was the last work that he could physically do without tremendous amounts of pain. After awhile, he just couldn't sit for a few hours. Too tough.

He moved into a small, spartan "adult living facility" and he would spend his days in a single lounge-chair. He was fine for money; he was on disability. But, his world shrank as he went from needing a cane to needing a walker, and, finally, a wheelchair (which he never got to use). Being sedentary, he never really burned calories, so he gained weight, which only made his immobility—and the struggle to move around—worse (he never got to the weight of the character in The Whale, not even close). Plus, he smoked, had COPD, and his lungs would fill with fluid, his metabolism slowed, his legs and feet swelled (which only made matters worse). Finally, he was on oxygen (while still smoking, although he never had a tank, just a recycler). His world was reduced to the chair, his TV, and the meals which he had delivered. His diet wasn't the best, but he did love his fruits and vegetables.

He loved movies, but even that got affected. His time-clock went all wonky, where he'd stay up all night, sleep during the day, but his attention span started to falter (I would get texts and phone messages at 4 a.m. because he had no sense of time). Movies he would've liked in the past, he couldn't stay awake through. He particularly didn't like movies with multi-verses; one was hard enough to handle on their own. He loved Batman movies, but hated 2022's The Batman because Robert Pattinson whispered all the time. "Epic fail!!" he texted me when he caught it on The Tube (I just held my opinion, saying I was sorry he didn't like it).* And, like Charlie in The Whale, he would apologize in abundance, not wanting to be "a burden." I never considered him so. But, I wish he could've made more of an effort, even though I knew how taxing those efforts were. It's not like he gave up. It's just that he stopped trying, so sedentary had his life become. He died last year. I miss him. 

And all those memories burbled up as I watched The Whale. Anybody not going through that, or knowing someone going through that, might not believe that someone could get themselves into such a state. And take that for not thinking much of the movie...or the character. It's just that grief can do some devastating things. And doesn't always make the most entertaining movies.

 

It's not that they don't care. Of course, they care. It's that they give up trying. Because it's so. damned. hard.

* One of many projects I have planned here are reviews of movies that he kept insisting I should see, but I never got around to. I'm going to do that this year.

Don't HATE HATE HATE Me Because I Like Crash (2004)

Here's another "Best Picture" article from the archives. It's a bit different in that I was addressing the response to Crash—the 2004 film and not david Cronenberg's controversial 1996 film—and the backlash to it winning its "Best Picture" Oscar. Being as it's something I've written in the past, I made a sweep for dead links and was disturbed that writings I had sighted in this have since gone dead, particularly those by critic Jim Emerson that I addressed. I wish they were here. Emerson's a fine writer and critic and his lack of representation, particularly on the rogerebert.com site (which began at the Chicago Sun-Times website) is a crying shame (it should be noted that Ebert hailed Crash as the best film of that year, but I don't think that has anything to do with any of this, but more that the Sun-Times was clearing out articles from the defunct Ebert site to make room on their servers). Anyway, I wish there was something I could do about that, and, sadly, I can't. These articles are just not available anymore. I think that's a great loss. I did find this, though.

 

Mike Lippert of the much-read movie blog "You Talking to Me?" (MIA since 2013) is having a blog-a-thon—one of those community drum-circles, where we pound on a theme and and listen to the echoes it creates. I don't participate very often in these, but when something inspires a surge in heart-beats, I plunge in. This time, the theme is "Justify Your Shitty Taste:" find a movie that has been given short-shrift and explain why you like it—defend yourself and your contrary opinion. Well, I had a piece in the hopper that I wrote years ago to a film that has had its share of acclaim—even winning Best Picture at the Oscars—but meets with such condescending sneers every time it gets mentioned in "movie circles" that I've always felt the need to defend it—up to a point...and then I give up. There's only so many times you can hit your head against a brick wall without doing damage to your own exquisite taste (that was written with sarcasm, btw). Here, from the depths of my ignorance (and my ever-growing "Draft" pile) is my justification of Crash.

Hello, my name is James Wilson, and I like Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004).

 

(Audience response: "Hi, James Wilson")

 

It's really funny...really funny, to the point of out-loud chuckles...the extreme reactions Crash gets from its many, many detractors—there's even a web-site that compares other Best-Picture winners to whether they're "worse than Crash". When Jim Emerson mentioned it as one of his least favorite movies (he has, in the past, listed it as one of his "sociopathic barbarities")* in a recent blog post, the comments section went up in arms with lemming-like ferocity. "I HATE HATE HATE Crash!" yelled (caps indicative) one of the comments.**

I don't. I like it. With the same rictus smile that I appreciate other cynical films.  And the more extreme the reaction to it, the more I smile, because it only drives home the film's point further, and exposes it as true.

Now, some (but only some) of the hatred of Crash comes from folks who consider Crash the usurper that took the "Best Picture" Oscar from *sigh* Brokeback Mountain (as if the Oscars are ever truly the indicator of quality). Now, I didn't mind Brokeback--there was much to admire--the stunning cinematography, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana's cruel, no-holds-barred/no-feelings-spared screenplay, and Heath Ledger's performance—someone finally captured the essence of the archetypal head-strong, mumbling western dude (and the guy was Australian, fer cryin' out loud!). Plus, there was something altogether shattering about his memorial to his lost love, in lieu of grave-stone. But, there was nothing in Brokeback Mountain that hasn't been done in every sudsy straight soap of the last eighty years. Nathan Lee of the Village Voice put it far better than I: Ann Proulx's bitter post-Oscar diatribe has a lot of empty fire to it, but, c'mon, honey, you were borrowing Faulkner's pen and you know it. And for anyone who thinks gay cowboys are revolutionary, skip right over the Village People and Jon Voigt for a moment and go directly to Red River. Howard Hawks knew it. Lenny Bruce knew it. Montgomery Clift, no doubt, knew it. "Cultural watershed?" Only if you weren't paying attention.

But Crash is the better movie. Crash is the subtler movie, believe it or not. Crash deserved that Best Picture Oscar, because it pulled off a great trick: it pissed off a lot of people, only proving its point.

Let me just say one thing about Crash: It's not "about" racism.

Yes, yes, I know, racism is all over the thing, morally repugnant, down and dirty, pig-ignorant racism. From all sides, and all races. And if racism was all it was about, yeah, some of the hatred for the film might have a point, because all the movie does is say "racism exists, and there's nothing you can do about it," which doesn't make it the Feel-Good Movie of the Year. If it was only about racism, then it would truly be committing that great movie sin "exemplifying what it rails against" like, say, Rollerball that says violence is a terrible thing and then rubs your nose in it for two hours. Or an "anti-war" movie that relishes its battle sequences. If it were so, 'twas a grievous fault.

But Crash is not just about racism. Racism is a symptom in it, but it's not the "end-all, be-all." Myopia is. The denizens of Crash are all folks (with very few significant exceptions) who've got it all figured out. Entrenched in their lives, in their jobs, in their bureaucracies, they think they've seen it all and they act appropriately. We've seen their type in movies before. Like Bogart's Richard Blaine in Casablanca who "sticks (his) neck out for nobody." Or Jack Nicholson's J.J. Gittes in Chinatown,*** who when asked what he did as a cop down there replies "as little as possible." They're not people of color, they're all gray, walking around with blinders on (which is why the movie's called Crash and not, say, Clash.) They all know "the score" and so they've stopped thinking. They live their cloistered, blindered lives in the grids of L.A. in their own little boxes of assumptions and none of them will try to see beyond them. They are numb to the world, and the cultural clashes are battles over turf, amplified rhetoric and action so (as Don Cheadle—who also produced the film—playing Detective Graham Waters says in the opening line of dialogue) "they can feel something."

Except...except. Haggis has been accused of manipulation (and like, duh, all movies are manipulative, hate to break it to you) but the most egregious examples are the pretty obvious incident of the "invisible cloak." I think every viewer above a third grade education knew what was coming--the kid was going to get "whacked" with her invisible cloak, because, hey, we're all cynics, and the movie has been pretty cynical up to that point--actually the characters IN the movie have been pretty cynical. But not the kid. In an altruistic, completely naive and childlike way, the kid goes beyond what any of the adults would do and makes a sacrifice to save her father. We all assume that to her doom, and Haggis milks the anguish, and delays the inevitable reveal. The kid's not dead. Why? Because the daughter of the angry shop-keeper has also thought outside the box, and bought her old man blank cartridges. Both those individuals have gone beyond the "I stick my neck out for nobody" syndrome, and the synchronicity has pulled off a miracle, or at least, prevented a tragedy, brought on by short-sightedness.

Myopia is all over the movie--even when racism isn't. Because there's more than racism going on. It's blacks against whites, whites against blacks, cops against civilians, politicians against the cops, the bureaucrats against the trench-fighters, upper class against lower class, and the reciprocal vice-versa. Myopia is ever-present, and everybody stops thinking when they reach their assumptions...and look no further. The insurance worker thinks the guy on the line is a dead-beat, the guy on the line thinks she's a bitchy negro. They both have drawn lines in the sand and will go no further. Matt Dillon's bad cop just assumes all the minorities are scum, so he treats them accordingly. Ryan Phillippe's good cop takes the high road and assumes he'll never act like that in any given circumstances. They're both short-sighted fools. And they won't consider any other possibility. They're two sides of the same coin.

For me, Crash plays like a post-modern film-noir, where the world is crummy, people are tarnished (whether they're rich or poor), but there is no "slumming angel" (as Ross McDonald put it) to try and make things temporarily right—all the characters in Crash have that ability if they choose, if they will, and there is no hand-holding narrator or Stage Manager bringing perspective, merely the dispassionate view from on high. The good that people do are mere slats of light in an all-enveloping darkness, not unlike the the noir's traditional backdrop, the venetian blind, or as the de-focused headlights in the film's credit sequence.

Another criticism: Too many coincidences in Crash? Yep, but that's to be expected with an ensemble cast in a limited area whether it's La Ronde, or Grand Hotel, or even...the acclaimed Babel where the coincidences are hemispheres apart (those butterflies are mighty powerful!). But Crash isn't like any of these films. The one I compare it to, both in tenor and reaction is The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir's condemnation of pre-WWII French society going to its ruin in selfishness and self-involvement. French folk hated The Rules of the Game, too. In fact, riots broke out in theaters, and to try and save his investment Renoir kept cutting it and cutting it to try to assuage the angry mob. As a result, after the war when the hysteria died down, it was difficult to find an unexpurgated version of The Rules of the Game until...1958. The tyranny of the mob had done its damage and its only by the luck and a little hard work that a longer copy of this classic exists. Fortunately Crash hasn't had to go that far. Maybe people are just more passive-aggressive these days, content to HATE HATE HATE in the relative anonymity of a bogus screen-name. Maybe that's progress?

So, if I'm in a crowd of people and Crash comes up, and folks get angry about it because it's "about" racism but doesn't "do" anything about it (I suppose a cameo by Rodney King might help...?), I don't say anything. It won't do any good. Folks have already made up their minds about Crash and if I try to point out they might be wrong and consider that possibility...no, no, that won't happen. Their thoughts stop at "racism" and go no further, thus proving the movie's point all over again, and proving, once again, why it's such a good film.

Ultimately it's a tough and pointless duty to watch a film with blinders on.  It's no way to see a film, and it's no way to lead a life...as Crash, for all its flaws, so ably demonstrates.

 

Afterward (2022): If anything the last 17 years have only cemented my feeling that Crash was important and is important. I've read the criticisms—I don't agree that the whites are inspired to become better persons (I think they'll all stay racist —even Matt Dillon's story after pulling Thandiwe**** Newton out of a burning car) as a result of the movie's stories. I think after "The End" title of Crash everybody is going to continue to be racist and myopic for the same reason everybody really is racist and myopic—they don't know any better and it's easier. It's why I don't believe we're in a "post-Racial" period (as so many "glass-half-full" believers seem to think). The slew of African-American deaths at the hands of police, the resulting "Black Lives Matter" demonstrations, the resulting paranoia about and demonizing of the "Black Lives Matter" demonstrations, the emboldening of hate-groups, of white supremacists, the January 6th insurrection, the hysterical terror of some groups that whites will be a minority in the U.S. by 2045, the "faux" CRT uproar—CRT has only appeared in college-level classes and parents should be more worried about calculus being taught K-12—right on up to the recent Supreme Court hearings just goes to prove that lines are drawn and they're drawn in indelible ink. If anything we're worse. And more myopic. And bolder about being proud of it.***** The bubbles we've created around ourselves have only grown thicker with the Internet. And the only way we're going to get out of our protective bubbles is by accident. And (as Major Kong says in Dr. Strangelove) "that goes for every last one of ya, regardless of your race, color, or creed."

And I've given up on Darwin as there's no evidence that the bad die faster.

Oh. And whether I think Brokeback Mountain should have won over Crash? Nope. And I'll use the words of saloon-keeper Richard Blaine as a reason: "The problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

In fact, if it was up to me, I would have vastly preferred Munich or Good Night, and Good Luck.

* ...which is a far cry from what he wrote in 2006: "As restrictive as the rules of this cycle may be, Crash still manages to be an unusually mechanical instance of it. With numbing predictability, every positive character is revealed to have a negative side (the good, tolerant cop, played by Ryan Phillippe, commits an impulsive, racially-triggered murder), while every negative character is revealed to have his or her positive (the racist cop, played by Matt Dillon, risks his life to save a black woman trapped in a wrecked car). Just about everyone is an instinctive racist, and just about everyone is a victim of racism, who learns his or her lesson when the tables are turned. Haggis piles up the coincidences that bring his characters together without shame or the slightest restraint; he seems to feel that by emphasizing the contrivances of his plotting, he is in fact revealing a hidden pattern, a secret will, that organizes the world. Turning bad writing into a metaphysical principle is indeed an accomplishment, and one that might well deserve an award – though Best Picture of 2005 is going a bit too far." 

From this to "sociopathic barbarity" is quite the change of opinion.  The above is reasoned analysis.  The latter is just hectoring screed.  Hating Crash became easier and more comfortable, then ratcheted up to the extreme.  Now, what was Crash saying again?

Emerson does this at times—I'll be shocked if there is ever a Christopher Nolan film that he will praise, rather than merely dismiss it, and he condemned Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers (without even seeing it) merely because Haggis had a hand in the screenplay—to his credit, after actually seeing it, he praised it.  This may sound like bashing the man, but Emerson's is a great voice in film criticism, and I love reading his output, whether I agree with it or not.  His is an essential voice in the understanding of the mechanics of how film can touch the eye and the brain and move the heart.  If he ever stops writing, I will mourn that day.

** Which reminds me of the George Clooney retort to the web-site that said he was "GAY GAY GAY:" "Two GAY's, maybe, but the third's a little extreme."

*** Chinatown also makes a point of using prejudice, not just racial, but class prejudice, as a distinctive example of reactive, rather than thinking, behavior.

**** That's not a typo and, yes, you remember it as "Thandie," but she's gone back to the original Zimbabwe spelling because...hey, why not...and you can only assuage Hollywood's simplifications for so long. 

***** I read a slug the other day they there's some Republican buzz about bringing back miscegenation laws. What the hell?

Gods and Monsters

Gods and Monsters (Bill Condon, 1998) Frankenstein begot "The Monster." Mary Shelley created Frankenstein. But the Modern Prometheus who caught lightning in a bottle and made Frankenstein more than the sum of its parts was director James Whale.

James Whale's first directing gig was for Howard Hughes, directing sound and dialogue versions of silent scenes from Hell's Angels that had already been shot, taking advantage of film's new recording technology with the introduction of "talkies." He'd come from England where he'd made his name with an acclaimed stage production of "Journey's End" in 1928, supervised its move to Broadway, and then went to Hollywood, where he briefly served as a dialogue coach, then went on to Hughes WWI flying epic. A quick study and wildly imaginative, he'd completed the film version of Journey's End before his work on Hell's Angels was released from Hughes' meticulously and repeatedly washed hands. In another year, he would achieve his greatest success, overseeing a new, and what is considered the definitive, version of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," using the stylistics of German Expressionism and creating a monster, but also getting under its skin, evoking a strange empathy for this defiance of Nature and God. It was the first film of a five year contract with Universal Studios, and his choice of the inventoried properties to direct, evidently because the other scripts ready to be made held no interest for him.

When considering Gods and Monsters, the film purporting to be about the last days of Whale, there is always a giddy part of me that recalls the delirious segment of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (aren't they all?) called "Farming Club,' in which a serious BBC commentator begins to discuss the composer Tchaikovsky before it deteriorates ("which is a bit of a pity as this is 'Farming Club'"), and then returns to a discussion of the composer with the lead-off: "Tchaikowsky. Was he the tortured soul who poured out his immortal longings into dignified passages of stately music, or was he just an old poof who wrote tunes?"

Cruel, maybe. But the film makes the mistake that a lot of us who "read" films does—it makes its assumptions out of things it already knows, and, once having made those assumptions, stops.* It does a fine job of recreating Whale's work making his "monster movies," specifically Frankenstein, the one that towers over them all. It's good that it at least brings into the light of day Whale's homosexuality and how it might have informed his work. But, just as his two "Frankenstein" movies overshadowed the rest of his career, Gods and Monsters seems to only concern itself with that aspect of Whale's life (much like the "film aficianado" that Whale grants an interview to, becomes disenchanted that his interest is in the horror films and so demands that he remove an article of clothing for every one of those questions). There's a lot more that the film either ignores or glosses over, in exchange for trumping up a story about a possible relationship that Whale (played by Ian McKellen) might have had with his gardener (Brendan Fraser), a result of which, Whale ended up drowning in his own swimming pool.  As such, it does as much a disservice to its subject as Hollywoodland does to George Reeves.

The fact of the matter is, both movies try to shoe-horn some psycho-babble and ginned-up rumor to try to explain the completely private act of suicide. We don't what what drove these two men to take their lives. We can only conjecture.  But, what was on their minds at those final moments can only be explained by the subjects themselves, and those critical thoughts are far more complicated for the sort of detective work that might easily solve "who stole Lady Penelope's diamonds?"**

There's more to Whale than Frankenstein. He was a prisoner of war during WWI, where he lived a kind of "King Rat" existence, accumulating a sizable amount of cash from his fellow prisoners in poker games. He was an "out" homosexual at a time when everything was "on the QT and very hush-hush." He lived in Hollywood very well, from some extremely good investments, and in a long-term relationship with one man, producer David Lewis. He directed for both film and stage, and among his other works are The Old Dark House, the Claude Rains version of The Invisible Man, and Show Boat, considered by many to be the best version, which one could argue simply because it contains the towering presence of Paul Robeson. But there's more, and much more. However, owing to the vagaries of box-office and the whims of fashion, not all of Whale's work is available to see. And so, it becomes no longer part of the equation in the matter of considering Whale, the artist. What we're left with is his best known, but not most typical, work. Frankenstein explains James Whale as much as "Rosebud" explains Citizen Kane. And that is, inadequately.

Gods and Monsters is, finally, dishonest. It serves up melodrama, for what is a more compelling, if depressing, truth. What this "Master of Horror" finally feared was a life out of his control, that he was no longer master of. And rather than face that fear of life unimaginable to him, he chose the fast way out. Not as compelling, maybe, as what Condon's film serves up, but, I think it would be truer to the source—and tie in better with the milieu it's obsessed with—if it was to make the point that Horror isn't cooked up in flashes of lightning and sparking laboratories.  It is far more commonplace. Horror can be Nature itself, as ordinary as illness and disease and frailty. It's a better message, I think. But try and get an audience to go see that.

* Look.  I do it, too.

** The best evidence, of course, was Whale's suicide note, which was kept secret for many years, and as Nature (and Hollywood) abhors a vacuum, that allowed for decades of speculation to become fact—or rather ill become it.  This is what Whale's final message read: 

"To ALL I LOVE,
"Do not grieve for me. My nerves are all shot and for the last year I have been in agony day and night—except when I sleep with sleeping pills—and any peace I have by day is when I am drugged by pills.
"I have had a wonderful life but it is over and my nerves get worse and I am afraid they will have to take me away. So please forgive me, all those I love and may God forgive me too, but I cannot bear the agony and it [is] best for everyone this way.
"The future is just old age and illness and pain. Goodbye and thank you for all your love. I must have peace and this is the only way.
"Jimmy"

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In my studio career, I've done lots of auditions. Lots and lots. We've had whole days where folks came in to read a part, or we'd ask agents to bring folks in we'd never seen before to see who was out there, and if they had some possibilities.

There was an open-call for the part of a kid for a video game company, and we were pretty shy of "young adult" voices, so we held an open casting. People would come in, take a look at the script, and then I'd record them for one or two "takes," say "Thanks! That was great!" (whether it was or not) and go on to the next one. Then, we'd take all the recordings and put them into a nice little collection and ship them out to the producer/director/writer who would do the casting. Sometimes, they'd ask for our recommendations. They'd at least inquire if there were any possibilities. This particular writer/producer/director (we'll call him "Bob") was also an actor, so we could talk about specific qualities that we were looking for in detail. In other words, we could "fine-tune" the search.

The day of the audition, actor after actor showed up to have their voice recorded so that Bob could hear what they might do with the material, and as with every audition they ran the gamut from possible to horrible. By two in the afternoon, there wasn't anybody I thought was any good. Oh, there were a couple we could "get by" with, but on the whole it was one of the worst casting sessions I'd ever had. I'd even go so far as to try and direct these people into a performance to little success. In fact, I'd just finished the worst audition of the day when a guy showed up--a late addition to the schedule. He was about six feet, carried a back-pack, it was obvious he came in right off the street. He apologized for seeming unprepared, said he'd just graduated from Cornish and his agent thought he should do some auditions. I said, "Great! Whatever!" And put him into the booth. Then I gave him the standard instructions I gave all the auditioners about the part and what the producers might be looking for. I wasn't expecting anything different than what had come before.

But, a great talent can come from anywhere.

Right off the bat, he was good, with an intensity and a commitment that nobody else gave to the role. Plus, his timing was terrific, making the most of lines that had only a bit of humor to them. And--this was amazing--he had a sense of subtext, like the character actually had a life before he started talking, and it informed what he was saying now. Very rare, and that put him head and tails above all the rest of the auditioners. In fact, when Bob asked me if there were any I'd recommend, I said "Just one." That guy. "In fact, I wouldn't consider anybody else." "He's that good?" "He's THAT good."

So, Bob hired him. He thought he might be a bit old for the part, but he said, "He knows how to make himself sound younger, so we'll see." He said he was very easy to direct, and did things in a very subtle way. He was very happy with the performance, and the project was completed.

But it was rejected by the game company.

"He's too old!" they said in their infinite wisdom. "We want someone 14 to 15. He sounds 18, youngest." So, Bob had to recast and do it again, which was too bad. But, the client is always right in these things. So, this guy who was so good ended up getting replaced in the project.

But everything turned out all right in the end. This guy, this young actor, who'd just graduated, got paid for the part, and went on to do "other things."

And the client got what they wanted, which was to get someone who skewed a little younger. I'm sure they've forgotten the incident, and that they rejected this guy. But if they tried to get him today, they couldn't touch him.

His name: Brendan Fraser.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000409/

http://www.brendanfraser.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Fraser