James Wilby Web -

Maurice

Directed by James Ivory
Screenplay by Kit Hesketh-Harvey & James Ivory
Based on Maurice by E. M. Forster
Film released on September 1987

In 1909, Maurice Hall (James Wilby) enters Cambridge, where he befriends wealthy Clive Durham (Hugh Grant). Clive confesses he is sexually attracted to Maurice, who realises he is a homosexual when he begins to return Clive’s feelings. The two embark on an intense but chaste affair to avoid tarnishing Clive’s reputation, but eventually the relationship ends, and Clive marries Anne (Phoebe Nicholls). While visiting Clive, Maurice is drawn toward his friend’s servant, Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves).

Character arc written by Chelsea Allen

Maurice Hall is brave, so declares his friends at school. ‘A great mistake—he wasn’t brave: he was afraid of the dark. But no one knew this.’

In Edwardian England, Maurice grows up in the suburban upper middle class, with a bright, friendly face, and a good build, although he is not too colossal at games nor at schoolwork. As a boy, he has a distinct sense that he’s being lied to, when his teacher, drawing diagrams on the sand, explains to him the sacrosanct matter of sex. While at his next school, he moves in a most tormenting darkness. What his subconscious hints at makes him believe it’s a lone curse that’s befallen him: a dream, wherein he plays football with a naked George, once a garden boy for the Halls. And a second dream, which speaks to him of a friend whom he does not find in waking. To conceal his mind full of carnal thoughts—his mind which he believes to be most vile, to present himself as a rather empty creature, he’s unkind to his sisters and, because he believes school necessitates it, unkind to his schoolfellows, even the boys therein around whom ‘he would laugh loudly, talk absurdly, and be unable to work.’

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