argurotoxos | [film reaction/review] Maurice (Reply)

I first heard about Maurice when someone mentioned it during a discussion of Mary Renault's The Charioteer on

maryrenaultfics. Intrigued, I looked it up on Amazon and, thinking the plot sounded vaguely reminiscent of The Charioteer, albeit set in an earlier time period, and seeing that the reviews were almost universally five stars, I added it to my wish list.

Maurice is a simply beautiful film that fully deserves its own detailed scene-by-scene review. I'm not very fond of the summary on the back of the DVD, but the first line is perfect: "Set against the stifling conformity of pre-World War I English society, E.M. Forster's Maurice is a story of coming to terms with one's sexuality and identity in the face of disapproval and misunderstanding."

The main character - Maurice Hall (played by James Wilby) - is first exposed to homosexuality when his friend Clive Durham (Hugh Grant) confesses that he is in love with him while at school in Cambridge. After first recoiling in horror, Maurice accepts and returns Clive's affection, beginning his own path of self-discovery. It is, however, a Platonic relationship which Clive desires, with all of the idealism and sexual chastity that entails.

For a time, Maurice and Clive are able to continue rather happily, if in absolute secrecy due to the conventions of the time. Then, after Clive witnesses an acquaintance from school being disgraced and sent to prison for homosexual acts, he becomes convinced that he and Maurice must change their ways. Clive marries a young woman he meets while traveling in Greece, but Maurice, left in a wreck and still in love with Clive, refuses to follow in Clive's path. As Maurice struggles to find his own identity and be true to himself, he meets a young man named Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves), who is employed at Clive's estate as the gamekeeper. Maurice and Alec establish a secret relationship, doubly damned by the period for not only being homosexual but also for violating the rigid class distinctions of Edwardian England, that lacks the barriers on sex which Maurice had with Clive. The last scene shows Clive looking out his bedroom window, remembering Maurice as he was when they were together at Cambridge, while his wife stands behind him.

Someone wrote in a review I once read on The Charioteer that, while they were reading the book, they stopped seeing the bond between Laurie and Ralph as a homosexual relationship and started seeing it as simply a relationship. It's a praise that speaks to the universality of human feeling and one which I think Renault would graciously accept. Maurice, much the same, is a very human story, with characters that are flesh and blood. There are no stereotypes here, the relationships are tangible and real, and the physical moments are filmed with great tenderness. To top it off, the film is visually beautiful and the music, which features some lovely orchestral and choral melodies, soars with the story. The one criticism that has been repeated by both readers of the book and viewers of the movie, which I more or less agree with, is that the possibility that Maurice and Alec can really stay together is rather unrealistic. Also, there is one deleted scene which appears as a bonus on the second DVD which I really wish they had kept in the film as it reveals more about Alec's character and makes the chemistry between Maurice and Alec more believable.

By way of comparison, the main characters of The Charioteer and Maurice - Laurie 'Spud' Odell and Maurice Hall, respectively - are both young men who are awakened to their sexuality while at school and who, despite being considered outcasts by their respective societies for their homosexuality and their own lack of religious faith, try to be genuinely decent human beings and remain true to their own natures without sacrificing their self-respect. Their lives have both been touched by Plato's writings, though while Laurie reveres the Phaedrus and keeps it close to him as a precious book and guide through life, Maurice is much less affected. (Instead, it is Clive who shows the most respect for and, at least in the beginning of the film, emulation of Plato.)

Laurie, like Maurice, experiences two sorts of relationships in the course of the novel: one chaste and modeled on Platonic virtues (Laurie and Andrew), the other tempered by experience and the acceptance of physicality (Laurie and Ralph). In both cases, it is the latter type of relationship which Laurie and Maurice have at the end after their partner in the former relationship has left them, either from fear of society's punishment (Clive) or from concern for religious and moral standards (Andrew). Even though Laurie's relationships to Andrew and Ralph are similar to Maurice's to Clive and Alec, however, Andrew and Ralph's personalities have very little in common with Clive and Alec's.

Another similarity I noticed between Laurie and Maurice that I missed during my first viewing was that, just as it is commented upon in The Charioteer that Andrew resembles Ralph when he was younger, someone comments that Alec looks like Clive, only with messier hair. And just as Laurie and Maurice, however subconsciously, retain an attraction to the physical characteristics of their first lover, Laurie and Maurice also vaguely resemble each other, both having red hair and light skin. (To get an idea of what Laurie looks like, there is this wonderful Charioteer-inspired illustration by The Theban Band; Laurie is on the left and Ralph is on the right.)