Set in 1957, James Whale, the director of Show Boat, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, had long since stepped back from the glamor and glitz of Hollywood. A stroke triggers once buried flashes of memory of his life in Dudley, his film career, and, most influentially, the trenches during the Great War. Haunted and lonely, he recounts many of his experiences to his musclebound gardener, Clay Boone. Despite the divide that exists between them, their friendship develops. Reliant on his sternly disapproving housemaid, Hannah, the flamboyant director whose time has passed sees himself slipping away, unable to stop the decline, and indulges his fantasies by coaxing Boone to model for him.