Powerful

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

it is a great story of moving on from their relationship and settled their lives with people to love... giving back their friendship on a tight bonding still... i saw Maurice how he handled his life with courage and will.. he had made his life more interesting when he had he's work and love life flows at the same time... the scene has its beautiful location. the movie gave significance to family values.. it also signifies signifies the sense of loving same sex.. I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together. It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't coma back. You're left so alone that you can't explain. Damn, there's nothing like that, is there? I've been there and you have too. You're nodding your head.

This was a wonderfully put together movie. The actors were good, the writing and pacing was also well done. I also liked that the love story was presented as any other love story. I've seen movies, like for example Brokeback Mountain, where the homosexuality becomes a crutch and the movie expects you to like it solely based on that merit alone. Maurice, however, took the subject of homosexuality and used it to its advantage as a tool instead of a crutch. It used the sexuality of the characters to create more dramatic tension. It was a nice treatment. One quibble I had with the movie though was that the kissing scenes were rather more like face rolling scenes, very kind of funny when they probably should not have been. I have seen these types of kissing scenes between two men done much better in other films, but at the same time this film is dated 1987, so that might be part of it since kissing styles evolve each decade in movies. I'm glad that I took the time to watch this movie. It was a good story and gave me things to think about, which is something I enjoy about good movies.

At Cambridge, two scholars become dear friends, and then one day in a gamble, one tells the other that he loves him. The man proclaiming his passion is Clive, an member of the aristocracy who can expect a life of affluence, advantage and maybe public office. The man he feels affection for is Maurice, also well bred, who may go into stocks. In the beginning, Maurice is stunned and revolted by what his friend says, but later that night he climbs through the window to give him a sudden, hot-blooded kiss and murmurs "I love you." This film from James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, themselves both lovers and collaborators, is about the abyss between romantic idealism and urgent animal passion. Maurice, which was finished in 1914, was Forster's effort to confront in fiction his own homosexuality, and the novel was concealed until after his death. The story is set before WWI, when homosexuality was legally forbidden in Britain and being found out meant discredit and shame.Between Clive and Maurice, their views on love are contradictory. Clive is not that keen on the physical consummation of love. He feels it will "lower" them. His thinking is more spiritual and unrealistic. Maurice, once he has been familiarized with the concept of love between men, becomes a fervent romantic, and soon, Clive, the pursuer, becomes the pursued. Clive worries about publicity and scandal. He views homosexuality as something to be fought and conquered, and he ends it with Maurice to wed, take on his family duties and go into politics. Maurice is devastated, and there are bittersweet scenes in which he seeks out support from a hypnotist and the family doctor. Then he has a sexual episode of surprised fervor with Scudder, the coarse gamekeeper on Clive's land.Merchant and Ivory convey this story in a film so perfectly understated and so astutely acted that it almost merits seeing purely to look upon the production. Scene after scene is flawlessly constructed: a sleepy afternoon drifting on the river behind the Cambridge campus, a haphazard cricket game between masters and servants, the everyday custom of college life, outings to country estates and town homes, the details of the rooms. Ben Kingsley, Simon Callow, Billie Whitelaw and Denholm Elliott are all compelling. While some find Wilby imprecise in the title role, I feel he makes proper choices, playing a guy whose most heartfelt thoughts were constantly elsewhere.The question at the heart of the movie is with the chasm between Maurice's decisions. His first love is a person with whom he has much in common. They share wits as well as flesh. The gamekeeper is bluntly depicted as a coarse blue-collar kid, good-looking but simple. In the unbending class boundaries of 1914 England, the two men have little in common at all. The true reason their relationship is bold is not owing to sexuality but to status.Will their love triumph over all? Maybe. Brute sexuality is a vital part of everybody, but particularly after that original passion has dampened down, it's not the most essential part. There comes a time when people need to basically relate to each other. Will that time ever come between Maurice and Scudder? If their choice to live together was a worthy and spirited thing, it would appear to contend that the most significant thing about them was their being gay. But because the story is about the internal strife of two young men confronting their homosexuality throughout times when it was criminal, the choices both Maurice and Clive make are based on survival, not ideal fulfillment. One may be happier than the other, but they'll always be running and hiding from how much they love each other.

I really liked this movie when I first saw it in 1987. I like it even more today. This is the story of two gay men in the early 20th Century, how they fall in love, how they fall apart, and how they eventually take very different paths. One that leads to a life of sadness and regret. The other to acceptance, love, and fulfillment. James Wilby gives a powerful performance as Maurice, a middle class gentleman who discovers his homosexuality while away for college at Cambridge University. It is there he meets and falls in love with Clive Durham, played brilliantly by Hugh Grant, an upper class gentleman who lives in a decaying English manor, called Pendersligh Park, that was built by his grandfather's grandfather. They enter into a passionate, albeit sexless, relationship that most viewers will see as doomed from the start. Maurice, once he overcomes his internal conflict over who and what he actually is, is drowning in love for Clive. Clive on the other hand, though he is in love with Maurice, is perhaps more in love with the idea of Maurice, than Maurice himself. When outside circumstances intervene, their world together comes crashing down, and the results are painful for both. One of the plot devices that I found intriguing, and not having read the book I don't know if it is part of the original story, is Simcox, Clive's butler, played menacingly and effectively by Patrick Godfrey. He informs the viewer of the disapproval and judgment directed at Maurice and Clive that IS Edwardian England. Simcox delivers even the most banal lines with an almost imperceptible sneer. Even when he has no lines he is lurking in the background of the scene with a stone cold gaze that says, "I know what you're up to." He is the warden. Edwardian England is the prison. And Pendersleigh Park is Clives cell.I missed many of the finer points of this film the first time I saw it in 1987. Back then the ending disappointed me because I identified with Maurice and I felt like he waked away with the second prize, Alec Scudder. And Clive caved to the pressures of Edwardian England and entered into a marriage he was never suited for. All of that was true then, and is still true today. However, with 20 plus years of maturation behind me I now understand that when the credits role at the end of this film Clive is as deeply in love with Maurice as he ever was. The finale of the film is a window into the lifeless, hopeless, longing, that is Clive's future, contrasted with that of the fulfillment and joy that will be Maurice's. After Clive and Maurice have their final words, Clive returns to his waiting wife inside Pendersleigh. Simcox asks, "will there will be anything else sir?", and then proceeds to close the house shutters for the night. You can almost hear the sound of cell doors closing for lights out in a penitentiary. Clive approaches his wife, who is seated in front of her vanity mirror. He leans in to kiss her cheek and they look up together into the mirror in front of them. They expect to see a happy couple. They don't. There is a sadness in Clive's eyes that they are both unprepared for. It is more shocking to Clive because now he is no longer fooling even himself. He pulls uncomfortably away from his wife and like a prisoner resigned to his confinement, he finishes closing the shutters, (the cell doors of Pendersleigh) one by one. As he comes to the last one he takes a final look out the window at freedom. Clive has chosen to accept society, and turn its turmoil toward him inward where he will always be conflicted and never know a moment of peace. Maurice has decided to accept who he is and deal with the turmoil in the world outside. It is heartbreaking. James Wilby carries this movie from start to finish. As Maurice it is his story to tell and tell it he does. From adolescent bewilderment, to revulsion with Clive's initial advances, to falling in love with Clive, then heartbreak, and finally to his own sunset to walk into. He never has a foot out of place. It is an honest and compelling performance. But it is Hugh Grant's complex and multi layered Clive that you're left with ricocheting around in your soul. When Clive says to Maurice, "It's like the good blundering creature that you are to try and comfort me, but there are limits," Grant conveys a sense of defeat, resignation, and emptiness that is almost too difficult to watch. At times he stares very far away. Probably to the place where he wishes he could be, but seems impossible to reach. I think because initially I was so personally disappointed in his characters evolution throughout the course of the movie, that I missed what a brilliant performance this was. Forgive me Mr. Grant. You are a truly talented actor.This is a brilliant film. It's all there: beautiful story, beautiful landscape cinematography, great script(small problem though with the editing and non-sequitur dialog when Scudder meets Maurice in London), great direction, perfect score, and above all two brilliant performances from James Wilby and Hugh Grant and many others in the supporting cast. This one is a must see.