Main cast: James Wilby (Maurice Hall), Hugh Grant (Clive Durham), Rupert Graves (Alec Scudder), Denholm Elliott (Doctor Barry), Simon Callow (Mr Ducie), Billie Whitelaw (Mrs Hall), Barry Foster (Dean Cornwallis), Judy Parfitt (Mrs Durham), Phoebe Nicholls (Anne Durham), and Ben Kingsley (Doctor Lasker-Jones)
Director: James Ivory

Spoiler warning! Spoiler warning! Spoiler warning!

Oh my, maybe I am not the type of person who should review gay movies at all. Maybe I don’t have that cultivated intellect that allows me to suspend my sense of reality while watching these major motion pictures regarded as the “cream of the crop” of gay theatrical releases and the films that should be the high point in any gay man’s collection. The movie Maurice came in at number 14 on the Logo Top 50 Greatest Films. Yet I’m gearing up to question all that as you can tell.

What am I thinking? It’s a Merchant & Ivory production! Come on! We are talking a first class period film with all the right costumes and all the top-notch acting (a brief glimpse of Helena Bonham Carter… come back here! Not so fast!) and all that strict attention to each and every detail all laid out in 140 minutes of glorious worship of all things EM Forster, the author who also wrote A Room With A View.

The Story

Clive, played by Hugh Grant, and Maurice, played by James Wilby, meet at Cambridge in Edwardian England and fall badly in love, er I mean madly, or at least they “say” they are in love, whatever. Clive convinces Maurice that any physical hanky panky between them would cheapen their deeply-felt boy love for each other. Maurice is not really happy with not getting a “lil somethin’ somethin'” but he valiantly goes along with this experiment in denial and blue balls and they continue this way for some years. A friend of Clive is arrested when he is caught attempting to pick up some sleazy sailor at a bar and gets himself sentenced to hard labor despite the large amount of clothing that remained on all parties involved.

Clive, scared of getting caught (for NOT having sex I guess…), refuses to go on with his “friendship” to Maurice. Maurice refuses to accept or understand any of this sudden change of plans until he finally learns that his dear friend is getting married to some faghag. Maurice now tries desperately to get help to cure his “sickness”. Then while staying with Clive and his new wife, he meets their studly young gamekeeper Scudder, played by Rupert Graves who is very game let me tell you, who forcibly pounds Maurice’s pasty white butt and after some more “gettin’ it on” later in a London hotel room they decide to run off together.

The Outcome

I watched close to 120 minutes out of a total of 140 minutes of Hugh Grant treating poor James Wilby like scum all because the dumb bunny actually bought the whole “saving ourselves for marriage” routine like so many other young kids. The part where it really got unbelievably painful is when EM Forster tried to make me buy the story of a grown man, even in Edwardian England, who would spend all of his youth without once getting laid somewhere out of the public eye with another guy if that was what he was into. If Maurice had, I for one firmly believe, he would have dumped that tired, queen of denial, Hugh Grant and the whole “platonic purity of love” thing in two minutes, not the however many years depicted in this movie. Was Maurice really that desperate and ugly?

I’m sorry but I have to admit, despite how well he might act, I have a severe bias when it comes to Hugh Grant to begin with, so the whole idea that someone as physically gawky-looking as he is could actually pull off messing with some poor guy’s head for so long because Hugh had convinced him to remain faithful. No way! I just cannot buy this story.

I have not even begun to pick on the conclusion of the film where the repressed, yet suddenly sexually liberated, middle class elitist James Wilby runs off with the rough and ready, working class, Rupert Graves and we actually are supposed to believe that “love will conquer all” despite everything we have been shown that would lead me to think otherwise. Yeah right, this highly repressed gay guy who has spent years believing he was mentally sick and suddenly has wild sex with another guy for the first time in his life, and surprise, he falls for this more experienced young guy and that is going to work? I’m all for the “power of love” but I also believe “with everything there comes a price” so I’m not too keen on buying what EM Forster is trying to sell here.

Now it has been pointed out that Maurice was a story based off Edward Carpenter who was an upper middle class man who was friend of EM Forster. Edward was gay and lived 35 years till his death with his lover, George Merrill, a working class person that he met on a train. Makes you wonder what was going on with those trains and why Maurice never rode one. The story is even more romantic in the fact that they were buried together no less.

I can believe that Maurice was remotely based on the Edward Carpenter and George Merrill relationship but in looking at the Wikipedia article about Edward Carpenter, it is quite obvious that the character Maurice is a much different person than the forward thinking, radical, gay activist, real smart person that Edward Carpenter was. Maybe EM Forster wrote himself into this story of how he would liked to have met someone like George Merrill as some sort of wishful thinking but I don’t believe it was meant to represent the actions of living people or a type of relationship that would have actually taken place.

In Summary

So yes, this is still a Merchant & Ivory film and it is a wonderfully made yet overly long movie with good acting and great costumes and incredible cinematography. The only thing I think you might get out of this story though would be some sort of cautionary tale about not defining yourself strictly through the relationships you are in. That is exactly the “with everything there comes a price” part I would think eventually Maurice is going to have to pay for by allowing these two men to define so much of his life for him. Eventually you have to learn to live with yourself and fight your own battles. I myself would have rather wasted my time seeing a movie about Edward Carpenter and frankly how studly was that working class hussy George Merrill?

I have a solution for future filmmakers in regards to the film treatment of many of these classic gay love stories.

If you switch the gender of one of the characters and treat it like any other love story, is it really that unique to begin with?

Does it seem to be a bit far-fetched and overly naive even for it’s time period?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, why the hell are you bothering to try and film this crap? Most likely you are dealing with a story that is better known for its rich history, not how well it was written.