Perhaps my favorite movie at the moment, “Maurice” (1987) is a dream I cannot stop thinking about. I don’t watch movies often- I have terrible focus, I forget peoples names, and I just feel like I’m wasting time. So for a movie to take up this much of my brain space, it takes a lot.
I found this movie in a subcategory of YouTube videos. People place movie or show scenes to songs that often fit the theme and in one of them it was “Maurice”. I’m a history nerd so any period pieces tend to catch my attention. I just Wiki searched the plot because Movie Laziness but the plot was so damn interesting, I had to find it.
In “Maurice”, we follow Maurice Hall, a Cambridge student in Edwardian England, during his early 20’s. Maurice discovers his love for a fellow classmate Clive Durham and how they must hide their love to avoid imprisonment and being shunned by the world they know. At this time, being gay was still a crime in England and both characters were perusing promising careers as a stockbroker (Maurice) and politician (Clive). The story deals heavily with repressed love and some deep internalized homophobia – shit people still deal with today. I think I’ve brought it up on here about the really repressed internalized bi-phobia I dealt with in my life so it struck a cord with me. I understand wholeheartedly what these characters were fighting and I think even if I showed my straight friends, they’d understand it too.
You can read a full synopsis here because I don’t want to spoil anything.
It’s such a truthful love story and it discusses things that most straight people don’t even think about. Most people don’t have to think about what it’s like to hide your love and hate yourself for it. It’s emotional and overall an absolute beauty but it does have some of that late ’80’s movie silliness that I adore. As a member of the LGBT+ community, I try to watch every single movie I can that has good LGBT+ representation. Some representation is heavy on the stereotypes or so explicit that even I’m uncomfortable. Finding a loving and heartbreaking movie such as this one is a diamond in the rough. Don’t get me wrong, I love the representation, I just hate how stale and sex-based a lot of it is (See: Call My By Your Name), IMO not enough of them focus on the emotional battlefield dealing with hidden love can be – and when movies do focus on that, they often do it well. (See: Brokeback Mountain)
There is a slime video on YouTube for you to watch (wink wink nudge nudge). But if you’re going to watch one movie this weekend, make it Maurice.
Last thoughts:
This movie is a book and I will be getting it in the mail tomorrow so I will not STOP talking about it. If you do watch -please do- feel free to DM me on Twitter to talk about it. None of my friends or family have seen it and I NEED to gush about it. Also enjoy young Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves. 🙂
Back to regular hockey shitposts tomorrow.
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Featured Image: BFI (They look so tough in the photo but they're all emotionally constipated dipshits, love it)
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