Maurice, Maurice , the name has a melody. Like the soft and coy English sun, like a stolen kiss left on a lover's tongue — that 'Maurice'! It is perhaps like Nabokov's Lolita , brimming with desire yet so forbidding; whispered into the darkness of a thousand sleepless nights; the eyes and lips — flesh and blood — all too close, too tangible, yet so painfully impossible — so impossibly beautiful.
At least, it must be so to Clive.
The film is heart breaking. It's heart breaking because it's not just about 'gay', or about 'romance', it's about life: the choices we make, how we come to terms with what we are, the horrors of social fetters and the (ridiculous) realities of class divisions.
The subtlety, the delicacy, the dream-like colours and the wave-like, rich texture of the music, composition of each shot…The utter tenderness of the form clothes the utter heartache of the content. Best are the little ironies, the little motifs, so ingenious and so cruel:
The moustache is the surrender to social expectations. When Maurice first went into the City, he grew a moustache and Clive commented it was horrible. That was when Maurice was eager to do what he 'ought to do'. Then there was Clive's breakdown, the turning point of the story (it's probably not a point but a protracted period of inner violence, if one really thinks about it — what hell must Clive have gone through). Clive is reborn, with a stiff, posh moustache. So shiny, so distant, so arrogant . Clive became what he 'ought to be': A slimy fish in the stinking waters of British upper society.
The window Maurice once climbed through into Clive's room, for the first 'I love you' and the first kiss in haste — later there was another window, another window of Clive's, that Scudder climbed through into Maurice's room, then Maurice's first night, a night so long it refused to yield to broad daylight until the last possible moment.
Greece: the platonic ideal. It was not what Clive 'expected'; it was not what Maurice ever wanted. For both, the ideal broke down. Similar was the reading list: first time round, Clive gave it to Maurice as a hint; the second time, Maurice pleaded with Clive to stay, Clive didn't.
Scudder knew about Clive and Maurice. How can anyone not…even Anne, the slight disappointment in her eyes, her questions with all-too-perfect cheerfulness, did she perhaps know? Or Ada? If they did, they were the gentler kind. Simcox was not, he observed in silence, judged — was Clive a little scared of his servant? How ironic, for a resolute 'sir' like him.
When they've grown from carefree boys into 'responsible' adults, Maurice made a choice and Clive made a choice. There's no tragedy in it — but 'no tragedy' is precisely where it is the most tragic: It is just life . It is what has to be.
Maurice chose love, passion, freedom; Clive chose name, position, security.
At the beginning, Clive was the bold, the unorthodox: he mocked religion when Maurice would always go to chapel; he looked straight into Maurice's eyes and said 'I love you'. But Clive was also, from the beginning, the eternally composed one . Even as Maurice initially rejected him, his response was rational and resolute; he insisted on keeping it platonic to keep it 'unspoiled'. It is after all not surprising that, after witnessing the prosecution of that certain Lord (indeed, a Lord! ), he decided to finally reject Maurice, with that rejecting a part of himself (Maurice: this is how it ends…?!). But how great a part? Clive did not need love to live — there are other great things in life than their relationship, so he told Maurice — but Maurice did. Even then, neither of them needed precisely one another to live: Maurice found someone else.They went separate ways.
Clive, the young Clive with his watery eyes and slight bashfulness, freed Maurice with his first advance, and Maurice never looked back since. But Clive retreated. When Maurice drove straight past the Dean, Clive hesitated; when Maurice wanted the corporeal, Clive shunned it. Maurice didn't give a damn, 'talk, talk!' — he was frank and he didn't want to be otherwise; he could not be otherwise. Clive, on the other hand, was a man of will, discipline , logic; he pushed Maurice away, although he never wanted Maurice gone — No matter how much cruel politeness he deployed, even when alone with Maurice, he wanted Maurice in his life: that kiss, that kiss on the hand…? Maurice knew.
How can Clive forget Maurice? 'Eighth?!' Frank as he was, Maurice didn't hide his surprise. What's more heart wrenching, than not even being the first 'friend' Clive thought to call…But that brief moment in the end makes up for all — Clive looked out of his window and saw the young man in the college quad, the warm breeze in his hair, his smile glazed by a lover's gaze as if by honey… The blunt youth, the only eternality. Clive remembers .
And how can Maurice forget Clive? After all...Scudder looks a bit like Clive, doesn't he?
But it is Scudder that really freed Maurice. Not only from rigid social rules regarding sex, but also from rigid social rules regarding class. Perhaps it is shallow — Clive and Maurice have known each other for many years, through music, conversations, through mutual development and shared learning; Scudder and Maurice slept together twice, that's all. But who says physicality is less important than the soul? Who says the body is baser than the name? Clive is caged by the snobbish nobility of his people and his class; Maurice fucked it all. And what is Clive's pain, when the treasure of his life 'degraded' himself and ran away with his very own gamekeeper? What is Clive's pain, hiding behind a hardened shell of cheerful, so very English propriety day and night , among society and with his wife,never having the tranquility of solitude yet forever lonely at heart?
From the days of Hall and Durham, to Maurice and Clive…To Hall again, then Durham again, then double Durham (oh marriage), then there's Scudder, then there's Alec, then there's no more Hall.
Really, there's no more Durham, no more Hall, but never, never forgotten. The Cambridge days that gently glow yellow, the punt on the Cam, grass that's always oily green, the smile that never fades, the music… 'Too fast, Maurice!' They laugh.
But Clive, you are too steady.
But again, perhaps after all, Clive was right.
Who knows what would befall Maurice and Scudder afterwards? Mundanity, quarrels? Repression, secrecy? Or did they cherish the hard-found love in a society that did not acknowledge human nature — did they live happily ever after?
In any case, that love between Durham and Hall, a love never melted into passion, an adoration never realised in bed, remains sacred, never blemished, never forgotten. Always, the grass is green, and the boy golden.
(ps I think Hugh Grant was simply too beautiful, to the point that he's heart breaking just being there, just looking with those eyes, so casting him as Clive probably distorts the plot a little. I may well be guilty of sympathising too much with Clive or of wishfully thinking that Clive has always treasured Maurice in the depth of his heart.)
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