BESTBOY GOES TO THE MOVIES

TITLE:Maurice
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: U.K.
DIRECTOR: James Ivory
CAST: James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves, Denholm Elliott
AVAILABLE ON VIDEO: Yes



"Any other man might have reported me to the Dean...or the Police!"
-- Clive Durham (Hugh Grant)
If you read this E. M. Forster novel, you find you must do some reading between the lines to extract the story that the Merchant/Ivory team have brought to the screen in Maurice. But it is there. In this film, set in the early 1900's, unfolds a remarkable story of gay love and some larger than life characters who are everything good movie characters should be. Maurice Hall (James Wilby) is a man who, in spite of his early resistance to his true feelings, decides that he must take some risks if his life is to be worthwhile. Especially his love life.

While attending Cambridge, Maurcie meets Clive Durham and as their friendship grows, Durham eventually admits his love for his school chum. Maurice is appropriately shocked and brushes the advance off as 'rubbish' which sets Durham on the defensive about his sexuality, especially when Maurice finally comes around and attempts to undo the rebuff. For a time, the relationship flourishes and, while they are unaware of the homosexual nature of the boys' friendship, their families become close also. Maurice and Clive spend a great deal of time together at Pendersleigh Park (Durham's country manor) and at Hall's family home in London.

Shortly after another school mate, Vicount Risley, is prosecuted and convicted for attempting a sexual encounter with a militiaman, and is ruined by scandal, Durham, of aristocratic stock himself, decides he must change. Maurice is devestated by this but the friendship remains intact. Maurice also decides to try to change and even undergoes hypnotherapy in the effort. But it is to no avail. He falls for Durham's game keeper, Scutter, a scruffy but handsome lad who is very to the point about his intentions and his feelings.

This film is everything you'd expect of a Merchant/Ivory project. It's a period piece, high drama, but adventurous and not starchy, as British drama often tends to be. It even has some wonderful humor, albeit, low-key. Maurice is very bold in it's depiction of gay men attempting to be themselves at a time and in a culture where the very whif of 'immoral' behavior could cost one everything as is witnessed when Risley is convicted and stripped of his title and property. It examines in great detail, the excruciating emotional turmoil that gay men and women of the period endured and makes us realize that we are certainly far better off some 80 years hence. It is a powerful story of the loves in Maurice Hall's life and how he chooses his love over his material world.

Maurice is an enjoyable film especially as a study of gay people's lives early in the 20th century as it exposes where and how deeply rooted homophobia lies in western culture yet tells us that there were probably many who held hope that gay people would, one day, be able to live their loves with pride. Definite collector material.

BESTBOY'S RATING:



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