Although proudly a gay work, who could not be moved by Maurice's heartfelt question to Alec – which bridges class, education, and on a human level even sexual orientation – "Did you ever dream you could have a friend, someone to last your whole life?"
When Maurice and Alec finally come together, after all their tribulations (caused by both society and themselves), we feel as an audience that they have truly earned the right to love. Their connection is even more moving because of the enormous forces stacked against them, in the form of social oppression so severe that not only does it not want them to join together, it wants to keep each of them "in the closet" – unaware of their own intrinsic nature. When Maurice and Alec triumph over such pervasive adversity, we have seen and felt all that they were up against: class differences, the law, religion, and a society too frightened and cynical to confront its own prejudices.
The ending of Maurice works because we see the stark contrast to Maurice and Alec's happiness in the perfunctory marriage of Clive and Anne. Clive's is the road Maurice almost forced himself to take (through hypnosis, no less), with his fears of social reprisal. We know that Clive may well go on to financial and even political success; and Anne seems like a nice woman, even if she is a bit chirpy and unreflective. But Maurice and Alec have at last achieved something special together.And there is now a wonderful, almost telepathic – and profoundly romantic – connection between the two men. Maurice intuitively knew where to meet Alec (the boat house) even though he never got Alec's note: just imagine how differently things might have turned out for, say, Romeo and Juliet if those "star-cross'd lovers" had been as attuned to each other as these two men.This resolution is also so powerful because they each make a supreme sacrifice, take major leaps of (romantic) faith: Maurice actually does "chuck it all" for love, and so does Alec, forgoing a fresh start in Argentina to be with the man he loves. And the narrative is also left open in a satisfying yet provocative way. (Happily, Forster discarded his original epilogue, described in his Terminal Note to the manuscript as "Kitty encountering two woodcutters some years later;" he then goes on to say that this scene "gave universal dissatisfaction. Epilogues are for Tolstoy.")
On the one hand, the ending shows us the fulfillment of Maurice's painful yet essential journey of growth towards self-understanding, self-acceptance, and the sharing of love and passion with another. The spirit, the flesh, and even the mind, have at last come together. But Maurice's final moments are also wonderfully, vitally open: Maurice and Alec take their first steps together into a larger world (although unlike Forster, writing in 1913, we know that World War I looms just one year away). Another of Maurice's pleasures is that it that allows, almost demands, that each of us imagine our own "sequel." For the romantically-disinclined, several reasons can be whipped up for the dissolution of their bond. But for those of us with faith in Maurice and Alec's union, we can speculate, Did they fight in the War? Were they together, or separated – perhaps by reasons of class? Was their love found out; and if so how did they escape from the inevitable stockade? And if we believe that they both survived the War, where did they go afterward? Did they remain in England, or try the Continent; or did they emigrate to a distant land to begin a new, more open life, say in the Australian outback or the U.S.'s "wild west" or somewhere remote South America? What do you think happened to them? The questions are as tantalizing as they are provocative; each person who comes to Maurice will, of course, imagine their own continuation.
What's in a name? As we see at various points, how you address someone in this stratified society matters enormously: Scudder is how you call a servant, Mr. Scudder is a respectable fellow, and Alec is what you whisper to the man who you love. Maurice's surname – Hall – how perfectly it fits his character. A hall can be many different things: a narrow passageway, or an expansive room, even a magnificent home. With Maurice, we saw this extraordinarily ordinary young man progressively embody each of those three meanings, as he lead himself from the straight and narrow, into a place of openness and possibility, together with the man he loves and with whom, we hope, he creates a lasting home.
It is no wonder that such a heartfelt, resonant tale continues to appeal to people, who can be moved by this universal celebration of self-discovery, integrity and love. ~ J. Clark
Information: 'Maurice'The traditional bildungsroman, or novel of education, ends with a marriage. E.M. Forster's Maurice(1914), the second of his novels to be adapted by Merchant Ivory, takes on a subject that no major novel in the genre had ever addressed: the problem of coming of age as a homosexual in a restrictive society. First published in 1971, after Forster's death, and long neglected by critics, it is only recently (and largely since the release of the film adaptation) that critics have come to set Maurice in its unique place among "Reader, I married him" narratives.Starring James Wilby (Maurice) and Hugh Grant (Clive) as two Cambridge undergraduates who fall in love, the film is set amidst the hypocritical homoerotic subculture of the English university in Forster's time. In an environment in which any reference to " the unspeakable vice of the Greeks" is omitted, and any overture toward a physical relationship between men might be punishable by law, Maurice and Clive struggle to come to terms with their own feelings toward each other and toward a repressive society.
Maurice was shot on location largely in the halls and quadrangles of King's College, Cambridge (including stunning interiors in the college's world famous Gothic chapel), where Forster was educated and later returned as a Fellow. The other interiors were primarily shot at Wilbury Park, an early Palladian house in Wilshire. Called Pendersleigh in the film, this setting is where Maurice visits his friend Clive; here he later meets the under-gamekeeper Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves), who climbs in his window one night in order to "share" with Maurice, as the genteel Edwardians put it. Wilbury Park was a warm-up for Ivory for the grand country house scenes in The Remains of the Day, shot six years later.
Wilby, under Ivory's direction, infuses the title character with a quiet sensitivity and an underlying sense of desperation to create a character who, as Forster wrote, has "an ingredient that puzzles him, wakes him up, torments him and finally saves him." Grant plays Clive with a blend of dead-on English public school arrogance and intimate vulnerability that attracts, and then nearly destroys, Maurice.Mark Tandy is the confident Cantabridgian Lord Risley, whose later conviction as a criminal "of the Oscar Wilde sort" changes the course of the film. Denholm Elliot, Simon Callow, and Ben Kingsley turn in strong performances as alternately well meaning and judgmental men who try and guide Maurice into a conventional married life.
The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 1987, where Ivory was awarded a Silver Lion as Best Director, sharing the prize with Ermanno Olmi. James Wilby and Hugh Grant were jointly awarded Best Actor, and Richard Robbins received the prize for his music -- a subtle and richly atmospheric score that is one the most memorable features of Maurice. ~ Merchant Ivory Productions
Film Information: 'Maurice'
Web: Cast, Bios and Additional Details at IMDb
Director: James Ivory
Writers: E.M. Forster (novel), Kit Hesketh-Harvey (writer)
Cast, Crew & Credits Full Cast, Crew & Credits
Genre: Drama / Romance
Awards: Nominated for Oscar & 4 wins
Runtime: 140 min
Spoken LanguageEnglish
Subtitled in: None
Film Preview Clip: 'Maurice'Film File Download: 'Maurice'
Disc 1File Self Extraction: (For PC) Download files into the same folder.
then click on the 'xxxx.part01.exe' file and the film will self extract.
(For Mac) You need a Command Line Archiver like Rar for Mac OS X'
Disc 2.
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