Review of Maurice (1987) by Rodolfo R — 20 Feb 2005

"What should we call the our company?".

"How about 'Merchant Ivory Productions?'".

"Why does your name get to be first?".

"Because if we called it 'Ivory Merchant Productions,' people will think we hunt elephants.".

"Wanker.".

I don't know if this is going to be a review or simply some random thoughts - and it suddenly occurs to me that I'm the only one who could ever tell the difference.

I stumbled upon [i]Maurice[/i] quite by accident. It was sometime during my second year of college, when Katy and Mel (short for Melissa) and Steve all lived together and when Mel and Tom were dating. I only mention these people as it was the last time I belonged to any particular group of friends. We were all in the Theatre Studies program at The Theatre School. We all smoked. We all drank Rolling Rock and we all got together every Wednesday to watch [i]90210[/i]. We even referred to ourselves as "the gang" - the same way that Brandon and Kelly et al. did. Katy and Mel adopted two cats named Skippy and Toby after the young rabbit and turtle in Disney's [i]Robin Hood[/i]. I guess it all sounds terribly oh, I don't know, [i]bourgeois[/i], but we had some good times. But this was ages ago and a lot has changed. Now, Tom is somewhere in Omaha and never knew about the enormous crush I developed on him when I found out he was bi. And he was bi in that cool "alcoholic writer" way, not that wretched "I'm-trying-to-piss-off-my-parents" way. The last I heard about Mel was that she has a son named Mel - which actually tells you everything you need to know about her character. The best Katy and I can figure, Steve got married, got divorced and is engaged again. Katy and I are still close. Her son Patrick turns 6 in June. Skippy was hit by a car and died, but Katy still has Toby. Anyway, one night I stopped by Katy and Mel and Steve's place and they and Tom had rented [i]Gaslight[/i] and [i]Maurice[/i]. Come to think of it, Joel may have been there too, but he never really was worth mentioning. I had never heard of [i]Maurice, [/i]E.M. Forster or probably even Merchant Ivory before that night and the film was eye-opening to say the least.

[i]Maurice[/i] was far from my first gay film. In my hometown, I had managed to find [i]Torch Song Trilogy[/i] and[i] Longtime Companion[/i] at the video store. I guess [i]A Chorus Line[/i] and [i]Cabaret[/i] could also be called gay films, but [i]Cabaret[/i] had a lot more going on than Brian's relationship with Maxmillian and [i]A Chorus Line[/i] was and is just awful. I managed to tape [i]An Early Frost[/i] and [i]Doing Time on Maple Drive[/i] as well as a few PBS docs, but [i]Maurice[/i] was different. Everything was just so damn proper. I couldn't really connect with [i]Torch Song[/i] because its inherent Jewishness was as foreign to me as its drag clubs. What you must remember is that Rodolfo grew up in a small town in Illinois, the son of a preacher and a teacher. We were (and are) WASPs. Appearence and decorum were a very important part of my upbringing. You didn't just put on a good facade before the congregation, you didn't bring up your personal feelings at home either. Last week on [i]Desperate Housewives[/i], Bree said it best: "We're WASPs, Dr. Goldfine. Not talking about the elephant in the room is what we do best.".

So [i]Maurice[/i] spoke to me. I could actually identify with Maurice coming to terms with his sexuality in a repressed environment because, in that sense, Edwardian England wasn't so very different from smalltown American in the early 1990s (I have no idea what it's like in small town America now - I haven't spent a great deal of time looking back). Like Maurice I really had to deal with my sexuality on my own. Of course unlike Maurice, I was not involved with Hugh Grant. And while Maurice and Clive's (Clive is Hugh's character) relationship never turned sexual, it still would have been nice to have someone so very pretty confessing his love for me.

So about the movie. It's very good. I obviously have attached a great deal of emotional significance to the picture, so I guess it would be fair to say that my opinion is slightly skewed. The DVD is produced as part of the Merchant Ivory Collection, which is apparently part of the Criterion Collection. The transfer is stunning and it comes with a second disc with two documentaries and several deleted scenes with commentary by director James Ivory. I wish Ivory had done commentary on the picture itself, but whatcha gonna do?

I actually got the DVD for Christmas from Beloved Annika and Sweet, Sweet William. The package arrived at my parents' house on Christmas Eve and was a most welcome reminder that I still know some decent people in the world. And that I once again seem to be part of a larger group of friends. They just happen to be geographically inconvenient.

And finally, [i]Maurice[/i] rates at least a ten on the Gack-O-Meter. I'll explain what that means someday. Or you can go to RockinTim's blog and go back a few entries until you get to that part. Whatever.