A "Clean-Up" Episode ft. MAURICE! A gorgeous love story.
We're back on that Ivory train! The Merchant/Ivory Express! Since A ROOM WITH A VIEW, we've been destined to revisit James Ivory as a filmmaker of tremendous honesty and compassion when it comes to realistic cinematic depictions of full-frontal nudity.
In this "Clean-Up" Episode, we're covering MAURICE, another adaption from the E.M. Forster catalogue of tales and a memorable addition to the staple of gay cinema. It's a period film and one that Laura loved very much (even if it is a bit long).
Laura: Well, hello there. Welcome to On the BiTTE the podcast that uncovers full frontal male nudity in cinema. My name is Laura, and I am joined by the one and only Ryan.
Ryan: Good day.
Laura: Good day to you, sir. Yeah, we're all up good day, sir.
Ryan: We're all good eye. No, it's not Australian. no, we're all up in that English today. We're all up in it.
Laura: We're going to have a full English today.
Ryan: Full English. Full Englishman.
Laura: Full Englishman.
Ryan: Full English.
Laura: I know a couple of guys have a full Englishman in this film, which is the 1987 drama, may I say, romantic drama Maurice And you're going to have to slap me in the face every time I say Maurice because I'm going to get slapped.
Ryan: I mean, I was going to call it Maurice. It's spelt Maurice, though. Otherwise it's Maurice
Laura: Maurice
Ryan: Maurice. I've had to put in it's like kind of like that Google Translate thing. I've had to put in brackets the actual the phonetic reading of Maurice above the title so that I say it correctly.
Laura: M-O-R-R-I-S.
Ryan: Yes, it's, Maurice Yes. Well, I mean, that's the spelling of Maurice as far as I'm concerned.
Laura: Well, that's m fine. I mean, we'll just have to deal with it.
Laura: And for as long as I've known that this movie has existed, I thought that Hugh Grant was the star of this film.
Ryan: Because he's on the poster.
Laura: He's on the poster.
Ryan: He's on the covers He's on our indent.
Laura: but he's not Maurice
Ryan: No, that's also one of the so tricky. That poster is also one of the nicest looking posters. who's the other guy? Who's the incredibly uninspired choice to play the title? The titular character, that would be James.
Laura: Wilby, who plays Maurice
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: So I'll just tell you the rest of the cast.
Ryan: Yeah, he's a bit flat. Mr. Pancake, as I've called him.
Laura: He was the second choice, which I will explain later.
Laura: Hugh Grant, obviously, Rupert Graves, Denholm Elliott, and Simon Callo are also in this film, directed by the one and only James Ivory.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: And I'm in the ivory trade. Give me more of that ivory.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: I think that's market for some ivory.
Ryan: That'S something I'm going to have to cut out because someone could take that.
Laura: Wildly out of context, the James ivory market.
Ryan: We live in a social media era, Laura. Someone could just take that out.
Laura: That is not the worst thing I've ever said.
Ryan: And they'll just superimpose your picture on top of a horrible image of someone who's just shot an elephant, probably. And then they can just put that in a loop. Okay, I've just gave someone an idea.
Ryan: Anyway, if anyone might not have yes, this is a Merchant Ivory, adaption of it's like the Em. Forster book as well.
Laura: Absolutely. By the same name?
Ryan: By the same name. And, this is another one of their adaptions because remember, The View was exactly the same as well. And this you might not have remembered, this is what we would call a it's because it's so sexy. So sexy. You need to put towel down and if you don't, there's obviously a bit of a mess.
Laura: Okay, great.
Ryan: A cleanup episode. And I'm, not going to be going into James Ivory's filmography or certainly the Merchant Ivory filmography. You want that in depth information, you have to go all the way back to episode 17, preferably watch it on YouTube. Because it was penned as it was a video, like it was a phone in video episode, with Miriam, who's still in, obviously, Ireland at the time.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: And, we did A Room with a View and, it was special.
Laura: I love that film very much. And guess what?
Ryan: That Room with a View episode is episode 17, if, ah, you need a number there in order to find it slightly easier.
Laura: But yes, I love this film. I really liked it.
Ryan: Maurice
Laura: Absolutely.
Ryan: I think the one thing, the issue I have with Maurice just in general is I think the story's okay, although I have some issues with the ending. Is it's just a little too long?
Laura: It is incredibly long. It's two plus hours.
Ryan: I didn't even say that about, playing the fields of the Lord, which is almost like 4 hours long. And I never felt that film was too long. This is almost 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Laura: It's pretty long. We had to watch it in two parts because no one's got well, I have time for that. I do.
Ryan: We were busy last night and I was like, let's get ahead long with this. We have things we want to do today. And then I fell asleep maybe about an hour and 40 minutes into it.
Laura: You fell asleep right before it was about to get sexy? Okay, hold on.
Laura: Before we get too, deep, I'm going to throw you the synopsis and the tagline. So the synopsis pulled from Letterboxd is after his lover rejects him, a young man trapped by the oppressiveness of Eduardian society tries to come to terms with and accept his sexuality.
Ryan: He felt trapped. He was oppressed.
Laura: yeah. I don't know if he felt too oppressed, if I'm being honest.
Ryan: As a privileged high class white man who had everything handed to him on a fucking silver plate. Yes. I don't think he would have felt the real sense of oppression.
Laura: No. And I will talk about that a bit more. I don't think it's oppression that he felt. I think he just was in love with the wrong person. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think that Morris's issue is the oppressiveness of Eduardian society more than it is the lover that isn't reciprocating his affections. I think that's his main issue. I don't think he necessarily felt the oppressiveness of Eduardian society in so much as he was sad that Clive didn't want to kiss him on the.
Ryan: Is why this is why you're a scientist, is that you're able to kind of put it into terms that make a lot more sense than I was able to. I'm like a working class grunt. I don't understand anything.
Laura: Would you call yourself a scutter?
Ryan: I'm kind of like a scutter. I'm a fucking scutter.
Laura: I want to dive into this so bad. I'm so excited.
Laura: So before we do, the tagline of this film is a love story of unforgettable passion.
Ryan: Okay?
Laura: Which is weird. Okay.
Ryan: It's a strange yeah, that's kind of a strange one. That's kind of like we have ten minutes before this goes to press. Just give us a tagline, please.
Laura: This is a weird film because it's a rare film in gay cinema, which spoilers, abound everybody. But this is a nice story. This is a nice story that came out in the mid to late 80s, where you just kind of have a great tale of love, romance and your first love, and then finding someone who actually cares about you. And it's weird to find that, especially at that time, you've got that height of the AIDS epidemic and, the AIDS scare, and everyone's terrified. You've got Thatcher causing all sorts of problems in England at the time of the film's release. obviously this film is not set then. The film starts in 1910. But it's a weird one because you see a gay film and we're almost so used to violence, I guess so. Which is so fucked up.
Ryan: Well, it's like, sad. Yeah. It's almost kind of trophy, in a sense. And I mean, I would go back to look at, say, Brought Back Mountain, which I feel like you would hate to be like, that's an accurate depiction of what it would be like. But unfortunately, even just kind of going by, today's standards. Yeah, it's a fairly accurate depiction of, how people view homosexuality. And anyone that's classed as, outside of, I guess, like, white people's, societal norms of the nuclear family, that sort of idea.
Laura: I don't know about that. I just think that we don't have enough of these stories, because these stories exist even in a world of oppression that we even live in now. Right. But not every story like that turns out to be sad and violent or, that unrequited love. You have nice stories of people falling in love. It occurs all the time. And so I like this because I like that you can just have a movie about people meeting each other and falling in love, and you have a nice story, you have a romantic film, boom, you're done.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: You don't have to get anyone. No one has to die.
Ryan: Similarly to A Room With a View, though, is that there's very little in the way of, I guess, tangible cinematic conflict. Like, it's all kind of interwoven with this sense of drama. and certainly when the film starts because I don't know, I find the film slightly kind of moot for the most part. Period films in general, I find to be slightly trite. But then when we kind of get to closer near the end of this film, the story, and it starts to kind of pick up a little bit more pace because you're like, oh, no. Who's going to, out this couple? Who's going to do this? And Scutter's saying some stuff. And I'm like, I'm shouting things like blackmail and all this sort of thing.
Laura: And I'm over here. Like, he just is sad. He loves him.
Ryan: And I'm like, oh, no. Scudder misty's boat. Where was he going? To Buenos Aris to do something with the church? yeah. I don't know. And I was just like, oh, my god. He's going to find them hanging in the boathouse. But they didn't. no. Yeah. Well, I just immediately kind of go to I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's just I immediately kind of go to that when you have these sort of like forbidden love stories.
Laura: Well, that's what I'm saying, is that's kind of the problem. And this is why this is a beautiful, rare gem in the world of this type of cinema. Because you can just have a nice story.
Ryan: Yeah. And I mean, I'll I'll be honest. There's a few things to really like in this film. I think the film looks nice. It's got a nice kind of, I guess it's kind of like muted palette. But I guess it's kind of like, I wouldn't say like beige, but like pastels. Like, it's kind of got that period pastel look about it.
Laura: green as well.
Ryan: Lots of green, because he likes a bit of greenery, Mr. Ivory. but yeah, again, it's a very kind of meticulously designed. He even said in a couple of the featurettes and stuff that we watched, that this was kind of like their perfection of their visualization of this world. And, it's not something that I think that comes naturally to James Ivory. James Ivory is, ah, an American. and I don't think he spent a lot of time in England, even though a few of his films are set in England during period England. This is Edwardian. I think it is Edwardian period. So this is just before the advent of the Great War. because there's like mumblings and stuff about. Obviously, there's a war on the horizon. But nothing ever kind of comes to it. None of these people are going off to war. no. But, yeah, I like the fact that this feels kind of meticulously kind of put together. And there's a real kind of distinct eye for detail. yeah, it's one of those I think if you like a film like this, you like a period piece tonally. And in terms of to the heights of which the story goes, I think this is incredibly easy watching it. If it's for you, I think that's fine.
Laura: This is a beautiful Sunday midday afternoon when it's like raining outside.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Kind of like have a nice cheese platter, watch some cute boys run around.
Ryan: Kind of like this morning where it's been like pissing with rain. We were able to watch the sex scene unimpeded. I didn't fall asleep to it. It's obviously better than the morning our neighbor's having right now because he's like sanding down some two X fours or something outside in the rain. and all you can hear is.
Laura: I would way rather have our morning with these lovely gentlemen.
Ryan: 100%. What do you think? I'm going to start building a house? Which is obviously what he's trying to do, or I'm only assuming is what he's trying to do outside is build a know.
Laura: There are a couple of things that I wanted to bring up before I talk about or before we talk about some of my favorite parts of this movie.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: But I feel like if you know James Ivory and you know, these type of films, room of The View specifically. And when you look at the main character of Maurice played by James Wilby, you would HM. I wonder if anyone else was meant to play that role. And if you were thinking Julian Sands, you're absolutely right. Because that's who was originally going to play Maurice And they kind of put Wilby off to the side because they go, well, he looks too much like Julian Sands with blonde hair. So he was never cast. But at the last minute, Sands backed out. James Ivory doesn't know why, but he goes, oh, that one guy that kind of looked like Julian would be a great choice. James Wilby and, oh my gosh, Hugh Grant were already friends right from way back when. this is only Hugh Grant's second film. And the first film he was in, which I believe was called something I've written down somewhere that I'll find eventually. But he and James Wilby were in that film.
Ryan: Right. Okay. So, I have zero issue with Hugh Grant's performance in this movie.
Laura: Oh, yeah. He is amazing.
Ryan: Hugh Grant is one of the saving elements of the tedium of this movie. I feel like, because there's something about and I mean, I'm sure he's a really good actor, but there's just something about the textualer character which just does not draw me in. I just don't believe him. He's just a little a lot of faith.
Laura: I'm sure he's a wonderful human being. I just, ah, think it was a little bit weak, I guess. But I think that's also his know.
Ryan: There'S a level of Grant.
Laura: Clive is the strong, determined character. And Maurice kind of just going along with the flow.
Ryan: There's a lot of questions over some of the intelligence of these individuals. they question a lot of that over the course of the movie where, Clive, which is obviously Hugh Grant's character, he's incredibly intelligent, he's very smart. he's very quippy. and then obviously with Maurice who's he's not able to reach the heady heights of, say, because he drops out of university, he's like, he should have just apologized. Yeah. again, that's something where I was.
Laura: Just like, we're skipping class. He goes, if you, what a bad boy, apologize, I'll let you back in school, no problem. And he's like, no.
Ryan: He's like, fuck it, I'm not fucking doing that.
Laura: Also, why wouldn't you apologize so you could stay with your best friend and potential lover? Why would you want to be separated like that? for no reason.
Ryan: Yeah. I don't know. I mean, to be fair, when you are set for life, I don't know if you ever really have those kind of measures of concerns.
Ryan: But was Denholm Elliot was he Morris's father in the movie? No, I didn't think so.
Laura: He's like he's Dr. Barry.
Ryan: He's dr. Barry. So I'm assuming why he's so high build.
Laura: Didn't see him a lot.
Ryan: You didn't? But he's doing classic, classic Denholm Elliott, who's like because he's in Room with a view for like maybe two minutes or something like that.
Laura: A lot of these folks are in Room.
Ryan: And I'm pretty sure all I ever called him during the course of the movie was, Marcus. Like Dr. Marcus. That's all I'll ever remember him as. Ah, Marcus from the Indiana Jones movie. my main kind of thing with it is just like yeah, it's a real shame that who they get to play Maurice just isn't as engaging as the people around them are. even Scudder even Scudder is like you're kind of perplexed a little bit by him and his performance. And I quite enjoy that. There's some standout moments, I think, with, know, I think the final confrontation between himself and, Maurice and Clive in the drawing room, is a pretty good scene. And it's kind of oh, the breakup. Yeah. The, yeah, I mean, I think that stuff's quite strong. It's just a shame. It's just like, oh, god. It's really the drudgery of the tedium of what they do in their daily lives is really put into harsh light when you see it performed by okay.
Laura: We don't need to keep taking a dump on this guy.
Ryan: I'm not taking a dump. I'm just saying that it's not enlightening enough.
Ryan: And you say, like, Julian Sands is like the alternative to this as well. And it's like, yeah, maybe it might have been better with Julian Sands.
Laura: Julian Sands is a very strong, rip, by the way. Hard. You know, he would have been a really strong character. So I think it would have played well. But I mean, I think he was fine. I just thought he was a little bit weaker.
Ryan: Just a bit moot. Yeah.
Laura: we talked about this a little bit in the Room with a View episode. But you know how Julian Sands and John Malkovich were like best friends?
Ryan: okay.
Laura: They became friends when they were filming The Killing Fields.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: And so John Malkovich was meant to be in this movie playing Ben Kingsley's part.
Ryan: Oh, fuck. Yeah. That would have been fucking awesome.
Laura: Yeah. But then when Sands left, Malkovich is like, no, I'm good. I'm not doing this. So then they got Ben Kingsley to come in as the hypnotist in this movie, which is so strange. He's trying to help the gay hypnotist hypnotize the gay out of him, I suppose.
Ryan: Pretty much. Yeah. He's trying to, pretty much straighten him up. Pretty much, yeah. I mean, obviously this is before, I think there was like indoctrination schools or something like that.
Laura: Oh, like gay conversion therapy.
Ryan: Conversion therapy. So this is kind of know in a nice way, he's doing his best Doctor Strange, impression.
Laura: it's one of the worst American accents I've ever heard. It sounds just like when Benedict Cumberbatch first got cast as Doctor Strange. Why don't you sit very hard and strange.
Ryan: Yeah, very strange. I want you to look at my finger. My finger is going to move it's a little bit like Windows 95 automated speech. Like it's incredibly, ah, startling and robotic. why don't I read you this letter?
Laura: It's really, uncomfortable to watch. And luckily he's not in the film for very long. No, that you don't have to worry about it.
Ryan: No. But to be fair, Ben Kingsley did play Gandhi. So he's kind he's he's a national treasure.
Laura: Love him.
Ryan: Yes. It's just a shame that he's plopped in here and he's like, James, I don't know how to do an American accent. I'm British.
Laura: Why he even has an American accent is beyond comprehension.
Ryan: Anyway, he didn't need to I'm assuming it's because his character in the book has an American accent.
Laura: completely unnecessary.
Ryan: It is completely unnecessary.
Laura: so I have some info about the book just a little bit and kind of why a little bit about King's College and stuff, which is where they filmed some of it. So Em Forrester wrote this novel, between 1913 and 1914. And it was only published after his death in 1971.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: In his will, Forster left all the rights to his books to King's College, where he went to school. And they have a self governing board of fellows of the college. So they didn't want to give permission to film Maurice And it wasn't because of the book, wasn't because of the subject matter. It's because they didn't think that the book is very good. And a film that would be made about it would be calling attention to the fact that it's an inferior work. And it wouldn't enhance Forster's literary reputation.
Ryan: Okay. All right.
Laura: Yeah. but they convinced them otherwise.
Ryan: Pretentious much.
Laura: Of course, this isn't a very good book. Are you sure you want to make.
Ryan: A film about it? It's like, let's drop a deuce directly into this poor man's dead body. Who wrote the book?
Laura: I gave you all the rights to my works.
Ryan: And your no, he obviously liked your college. He marked it up quite fondly. He fucking went there. What the fuck?
Laura: This movie starts off very weird and very funny. It kind of got me right in the beginning. Do you remember because you have the teacher and you have a young Maurice little blonde boy on the beach.
Ryan: Oh, this is so weird.
Laura: And the teacher kind of takes him aside. I don't understand. It's so creepy. It doesn't end up being creepy. But the teacher takes him away from the group of other kids.
Ryan: It does get, a wee bit creepy.
Laura: Oh, it's totally weird.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: So he gets him alone on the beach. And he's trying to kind of give him the birds and bees story where he's talking about changes that's going to happen in your body and using Latin terms to talk about penises and vaginas. He gets a stick and he starts drawing dicks and vaginas in the sand to this kid who's probably 1011 years old.
Ryan: Solidifying the fact that the scariest thing to a child is an old white man.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: It's just so like come on, Bobby. Let me show you something.
Laura: It's like here, over here.
Ryan: I'm going to draw some draw some genitalia on the sand of the beach.
Laura: I'm going to tell you about how your membrum weirlis is going to grow.
Ryan: And change, which is what I heard is member of Willis.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: So I don't know Bruce Willis. And this is pre 1910. So this is maybe just the turn of the century then, I'm assuming. Yeah, it had to be, because in 1910 is when Maurice and stuff is in they're in university. So they must be at least well, I don't know. Maybe time's different. Maybe they went to university when they were 1617. But, yes, it's turn of the century.
Laura: I just love that he's on the beach drawing kind of detailed vaginas. and penises on the beach. Pretty big, too.
Ryan: Yeah, like he's done it before.
Laura: And I mean that's. Fine. I mean, kids have penises and vaginas for the most part. So they've seen what these things look like, at least to themselves. But it's just not cool coming from this dude alone on the beach.
Ryan: It's kind of OD. Yeah. It's not the kind of Tom Foolery you would expect from, a preteen drawing like a big deck on the sand in the beach.
Laura: Why did he do that? I don't understand.
Ryan: Well, it goes into anatomical detail about how the penis goes into the vagina and how that then creates a child and all this sort of thing.
Laura: Maybe it's just setting up the world of the straight people.
Ryan: Maybe the conservatism of this straight living.
Laura: Is what you will do. You will find a vagina, you will put your penis in it and you will make babies. And this is what we do here and there's no other way about it. Maybe that's just setting that up for people. I don't know.
Ryan: Don't put it in the butthole. Make a baby like no, it doesn't go in the butthole. I mean, it can, but it's not going in the butthole. No butt play for Maurice God says no. Did Jesus do butt stuff? I don't think so.
Laura: I've never asked him.
Ryan: I don't know. I mean, was he real,
Laura: I want to talk about you, Grant. Come on.
Ryan: He's so good. He's so good in this movie and the minute he shows up he's all fresh faced.
Laura: Oh man, that hair. Honestly. Yeah, it's incredible. He's wonderful.
Ryan: Oh, I was looking for this, concerto, I was looking for the third movement. I was looking for make a poop joke about the third movement. Betty, I'm not going to.
Laura: I don't know where are we going from here?
Laura: There is this moment so they become friends, right? So Maurice and Clive become friends.
Ryan: They meet. Yeah.
Laura: And they become fast, close friends.
Laura: There's a moment where Maurice they have.
Ryan: A wild night with the auto piano.
Laura: They do, they have a great time, they have so much fun. But he pops a cigarette into Clive's mouth.
Ryan: He does. He pops a fag and he throws.
Laura: It in his mouth and he catches it. And they wrestle.
Ryan: We wrestle, yeah, you're damn right they wrestle.
Laura: And he rolls them up in the rug and just straddles him. And I was screaming, I loved it.
Ryan: There's a moment just before the auto piano thing as well where there's some sort of insinuation that one of them isn't as smart as a chicken cutlet or something. And I've got that in my notes and I was like, what is that all about? Anyway, they do end up having a little wrestle, doesn't he? Roll them up in the carpet.
Laura: He sure does. Yeah, he does.
Ryan: He rolls them up in the carpet.
Laura: That's what I just said. And he straddles him.
Ryan: He's poised. Having wrestling times in the university, I never did that in Uni. Admittedly, I didn't have a rug, but I mean, I didn't do much wrestling with other boys in university. Like the Greeks, I guess.
Laura: Like as they say in the film, the Unspeakable vice of the Greeks.
Ryan: Wow, look at you paying attention.
Laura: I did.
Ryan: You did?
Laura: They said that and I went, oh, looking at these boys, we're just having a little Greek wrestle.
Ryan: It's like women in love.
Laura: They keep talking about Greece and the Greek and how it's almost like a safe space for them in a way. And everyone else talks about it as though Greece, oh, it's only for pleasures. It's only a place for people to get down and dirty. So they're like, the boys should never go to Greece, even though the boys think of it as kind of like a safe haven.
Ryan: yeah, but I think we've brought stuff up like this before because we've been in Naples, you know, about kind of the Roman influence in society.
Laura: I haven't been to Greece. We haven't been to Greece yet.
Ryan: But it's all kind of like that deconstruction, like the advent of conservatism into Western society, where you kind of forget that, oh, look, the streets are littered with phallic imagery, and there's symbolic reasoning behind it all. And sex isn't really this taboo thing. It's depicted in, what would you call is it fresco?
Laura: There's frescoes.
Ryan: Yeah. Like, it's depicted in these old frescoes.
Laura: Pottery, sculpture.
Ryan: There's an openness about sex and sexuality and things where the idea of homosexuality isn't that much of a taboo.
Laura: No.
Ryan: So I do understand that they would obviously bring that up, even though there's probably not a distinct understanding and there's obviously a navigation of how their feelings are beginning to, I think the film does a very good job of depicting these feelings. I think James Ivory is very good at that.
Laura: you would know.
Ryan: And this is yeah, well, again, this is a very kind of like this is a story of unrequited homosexual love. And it's something it kind of like shits the bed at the end, but it's kind of like yeah, I feel know. Yeah, okay. Call Me by Your Name is probably a much better kind of telling of this.
Laura: Well, who wrote screenplay for that, exactly?
Ryan: James Ivory.
Laura: So he's very pissed to this day that they didn't put nudity in Call Me By Your Name. And I fully agree.
Ryan: Yeah. They kind of missed.
Laura: Why would you do that? He's like, I've done this before. I know what I'm doing.
Ryan: If James Ivory can get the amount of nudity in his films and it feels completely fucking innocuous, I don't understand why there's any sort of issue with that in films now. Because at no point am I watching it. And I go, oh, my God, this is far too much. Like, it completely makes sense.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: In the same way that it made sense with the room, with the view. When we get to those moments in this film. because before then, we've got that wicker chair cuddle.
Laura: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.
Laura: Okay, I want to talk about this for 5 hours, just this moment, because it opens really close on Clive's face. And he just has his head leaning on a thigh. Whose thigh? I don't know. Just a thigh. And then it kind of moves out a bit, and then you see a little bit more, and then you see a hand stroking. Clive's hair. Okay. And you just see this and you don't see anything else. You go, Whose hand is that? What's going on? What's happening? And it pulls back a little bit further, and you go, oh, that's Morris's hand, and that's his thigh. And they're having, like, a little cuddle.
Ryan: And then really slow creeks and cracks of the wicker chair.
Laura: And then Clive kind of looks up, doesn't he? Grab his hand, and then he gives them kind of a tight hug. And then they're trying to figure out what's going to happen next. This incredible tension between them. Sexual tension.
Ryan: Smoldering. I would say but then it was also kind of like once that happened, I was just like I remember having a wicker chair in my house when I was growing up as well. And I was like, I wanted to ask you, do you ever have, like, a wicker chair? Yeah, they're so noisy when you sit in them as well. But there's also, like I mean, I remember because this all kind of conjured up. I mean, I was in and out of the movie quite a fair amount. I was, like, thinking about certain things, but then I was like I also remember when I was younger, we had, like, a big swing chair. So it was kind of like ah. Not like a sex swing. Not like that. Not like, what's her face in that movie. Yeah, the sex swing in our front room of our basement basement house.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: no, it was like a cocoon seat, and it was kind of, like, elevated off the ground. And you could sit in that.
Laura: Yeah. Well, I mean, we're products of the.
Ryan: Like an Elizabeth Taylor, like, in a sex swing, like, swinging back and forth.
Laura: They were also, I think, made of, like, wicker bamboo. And they sat on a little thing, and it was like a round bowl, and it had, like, a big cushion in the middle. It was like a papazon.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: Is that what that's called?
Ryan: Those also.
Laura: Papa Dom.
Ryan: But I think papa Dom. Yeah. The papa. Domicious.
Laura: Papa Dom.
Ryan: I could murder some Indian today.
Laura: Hell, yeah. Wait.
Ryan: Some Indian food. Yeah, I know. Obviously. Sorry. I sometimes struggle with my colonial roots and keeping them in check. but, no, I would say that, well, no, our friends, they have one that looks very similar to that. It's black. That's in their back garden.
Laura: Yeah, that sort of thing.
Ryan: So imagine that.
Laura: But it's like everyone imagine our friend's chair that's in my backyard.
Ryan: Imagine a cocoon wicker chair with a nice soft cushion in it, and it's elevated off the ground in a kind of swing fashion. I have no idea why my mother decided to buy that and why she thought was a good idea.
Laura: Those are cool.
Ryan: they are cool. But it's also kind of like, because I was young and what happened to.
Laura: You in this chair.
Ryan: Nothing. I remember sitting in the chair. I remember falling asleep in that chair.
Laura: And have a sexual awakening in that chair.
Ryan: No, I don't know where well, you know about my sexual awakenings. You know all about them, how disgusting they were.
Laura: Anyway, so they get this moment of embrace and they're kind of building up this sexual tension and they're finally kind of figuring out that their relationship is slightly more than platonic. And doesn't someone just burst into the room? and I think I yelled, hide your boners, gentlemen.
Ryan: Yeah, something like that. Well, they burst into the room from the wicker chair. Cuddle I've also got written down in here because there's not really like there's a window creep and a kiss.
Laura: There's a window creeping kiss by Maurice creeps, into Clive's room.
Ryan: Yes. And then the next thing we know is that they're kind of kissing on the grass.
Laura: But okay, yeah, we can go into that scene too because I think that that window creeping kiss is the only lip kiss that they have together.
Ryan: No, in the drawing room, when they have that argument, he like kisses, forceful kiss. He like busts open his bottom lip.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: Well, because after this moment, I think Clive is really having a struggle and he's trying to figure out maybe he's trying to figure out his sexuality. Maybe he's also trying to figure out if he really has those type of feelings towards.
Ryan: Also, it's also kind of within this fear of their social group.
Ryan: There also is a character who meets a man in a bar and then tries it on with the man that he meets in the bar. Basically like a bellboy, right? A bus boy.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: He meets him in the bar and he tries to kiss him, but it's kind of like a sting operation and he gets arrested and obviously he goes to prison. And this is someone that Clive's known either from university or he's known from work and stuff.
Laura: No, they all know them. They all went to school together. Yes, they were all in those fancy book reading classes.
Ryan: But it's also a major kind of awakening that the society that they live in will not accommodate their current feelings. And you can see how Clive's kind of dissent, kind of begins know, he's saying things and kind of in the presence of Maurice to be like, look at these ladies. Aren't these the ladies? Hello, ladies. All don't we love the pretty girls? All this sort of stuff. And yeah, I mean, he can't control his homosexual urges, so he faints and he can't stop crying.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: Which I always was like, for whatever reason I thought was most hilarious.
Laura: Oh, I say, I'm going to faint.
Ryan: Oh, I'm going to faint. Oh, I say falls over.
Laura: Yeah, those immorality charges really got to him. And then he realized that he's in for some troubles or he thinks he's in for some troubles if, he.
Ryan: Continues in this love affair, that whole that court case. Because obviously, this is the 1910s, right? Women have no other place other than, in the home. Right. Let's just say that. Or they're working. The only other woman we see other than the ones that we see in this kind of privileged society is the one is the lassie in the bar in the pub who's pouring the pints.
Laura: Well, you also have the people working in the house.
Ryan: Yeah. And there's also the women working in the house, obviously. this is before working.
Laura: Are you looking good?
Ryan: Well, also, the women don't really have any rights. they're trophies. But, yeah. No. He's like, we can't be gay because the gayness is making him like he's making him sick. He emotionally cannot deal with it. Even the doctor who comes in, he's just kind of just like, all right, what now? Fuck's sake. Kind of just deals with him.
Laura: Do you really think that it was the immorality charges of their friend and his struggle with his own sexuality that made him faint? Or do you think that he kind of fell out of love with Maurice because of his mustache?
Ryan: I mean, whether or not I think that that's the case, it's obvious that that is what's happened here is that he was overcome by his own gayness. That he just couldn't deal with it anymore.
Laura: So it wasn't the mustache.
Ryan: So you can track how out these guys are by the appearance or, say, disappearance of a mustache. Because Maurice and Clive also they alternate mustache time. Alternate mustaches to the point where it's like the passing of the gauntlet. Right. The mustache passes from passes from it passes from Maurice to Clive at one point.
Laura: And then Clive, I think, keeps it for the most part of the film.
Ryan: Yeah. So you're at, your straightest when you have a mustache is pretty much what the film's telling me, is that Clive is married to a woman, and he has the mustache. And he continues to have that mustache for the remainder of the movie. And Maurice never gets the mustache back because he is gay.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: And obviously, that is kind of the visual motif that I took from it. But honestly, it couldn't be any more straightforward than that, is that we see literally a mustache on Morris's face. And then in the next scene, Clive has a mustache. And we just couldn't deal with it.
Laura: I cried. I was laughing so hard with the mustache switch. It was wild.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: Because it was right at the moment where you really start thinking about those mustaches. He was passing past the torch.
Ryan: He passed this straight mantle. And he continued with the straight mantle all up until, obviously, the end of the movie. I mean, I'm going to point this out. I also have a mustache. I don't know who I got it from.
Laura: Did you get it when you I don't know. Ryan. I think you got it when you married me.
Ryan: I'm the straightest man.
Laura: You know, now that you have the mustache.
Ryan: Pretty much, yeah. No, honestly, that was maybe the most interesting visual motif thing that we saw in the entire film. I think it was a completely unexpected and, totally not deliberate thing that happened in the film that we just found hilarious.
Laura: I loved it.
Laura: So let's dive into this first penis scene, if you don't mind. Do you mind?
Ryan: No. I think this is a perfect time.
Laura: To do this at an hour and eight minutes. This kind of comes in when you have Maurice who starts working out at a boxing gym.
Ryan: It's also a very weird this is a weird kind of well, he's sending letters. Clive and Maurice are still sending letters to each other, communicating what they're doing and things like that. And, yeah, he's training people at a boxing gym.
Laura: I don't know how he could train anyone. He doesn't look good.
Ryan: He went to university for a couple of weeks. And he's obviously slightly more it's old timey boxing as well. And I do love the guy that you see when it's first kind of tracks into this boxing gym. You see the guy and it's kind of like he's like rotating his fists in the way that they do is like old timey. Because you would expect them to have a big handlebar mustache when they're beating the fuck out of each other. But, yeah, he's teaching people how to box, I guess. And, then he ends up obviously in the changing room with all these menly men.
Laura: And I mean, you know better than me what it's like when you go into a locker room at a gym. How many naked dudes are around slapping each other with towels?
Ryan: Yeah, I've spoken about that at, Nauseam.
Laura: It's just like this movie.
Ryan: The YMCA is a very kind of precarious place. You keep your head down and you get dressed and you get, you.
Laura: Know but that's not what Maurice wants to do.
Ryan: You don't want to get a spare hog, like catching your thigh. You don't want that.
Laura: But these guys are just in the shower having some towel slaps. And Maurice is kind of in his.
Ryan: I'll be slightly more specific. They're in what is effectively the washroom. And there's a bucket of water. There's like four or five guys naked. And there's a bit of Tom Foolery with the bucket of water.
Laura: yeah, there's a lot of men on show in this particular moment. And they're all having a nice time in their platonic love with one another in the shower room.
Ryan: Yeah, this is kind of like always find stuff like this weird. It's kind of like when people say that moment in Top Gun. And it is kind of a little bit gay. It kind of feels gay. And that volleyball scene where everyone's just like, well, it's a little bit homoerotic, is it not? And it's kind of like, well, it seems to be perfectly okay to be a straight man, but then in these very specific scenarios, be completely naked and have fun and fool around and stuff like that, because that's what happens in a room with a view as well. That that primary scene is like, nobody's in love with anybody, but they're just like, we're enjoying each other's company and we're naked, and we're just like, yay. And it seems perfectly fine for that to never be construed as a moment as potentially, like, homoerotic.
Laura: Correct.
Ryan: But it's also kind of like it's inherently more homoerotic because you're all naked. You're all just like it's just like one step removed from because there's that moment in, can't Stop the Music as well. That's one of the primary parts of that. They all go to the YMCA. They're all naked in the kind of like the steam room washroom and stuff like that. And they're all just like, yeah, well, it's a little wink and an OD to be like, well, we're not gay, but we could be that sort of idea where it's like, well, yeah, this is the place to be. Because it's like where men can be men, all this sort of thing. But it's a wink and a nod to that kind of idea. So I always find things like that kind of weird. And yeah, it's kind of like this double standard that I don't fully understand.
Laura: well, I think it's just an interesting idea to have Maurice who is struggling with his sexual well, I don't think he's struggling with his sexuality, necessarily, at least at this point, because he does hire that hypnotist he does eventually.
Ryan: But I think it's kind of like, yeah, it's a weird one. As a visual thing, as a visual moment. This part does help to it's a good bit for obviously what the film's story and what they're trying to tell with Maurice and his character and his development and stuff like that is even in his best efforts to, I guess, straightify himself to a certain degree, which is obviously the greatest degree in which he would be considered probably the most straight would be he has to marry a woman or have a relationship with a woman. But he's going to a boxing gym. He's hanging out with other men, presumably other straight men who are doing very straight things in a straight environment. And he's just not able to escape those feelings that he is effectively he is burdened by an inability to enact the feelings that he's feeling.
Laura: Yeah. And he's looking on at these men who are just running around having a good time, and he feels a loss.
Ryan: Wink and a nod. They're doing normal straight things in a straight environment, supposedly. Wink, wink and very commas, obviously his man.
Laura: And I think, isn't this around the same time that Clive is in Greece trying or that already happened. Right. That was the time where that already happened.
Ryan: I thought you were going to bring up Anne. Anne woods.
Laura: I don't even bring her up at all.
Ryan: I do, because she's got touching slugs. Her eyebrows are horrific.
Laura: Is that Clive's wife?
Ryan: Yeah. Anne Woods, I call them. Yeah. They're touching slugs. They're like kissing slugs that are like on the top of her head. They are the biggest bushiest. Well, you do, because I have the same fucking eyebrows. But I still look at it and I'm just like, that, is dangerously close to a mono brow. It really is.
Laura: It was so painful because he's getting married. Right. So Clive's getting married to this chick, Anne. And he and Maurice haven't talked in a while, right. Just after this kind of breakup and this struggle. and Maurice is trying to keep in touch, but he hasn't heard back from Clive in ages. Right?
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: And he gets on the phone with Anne and she's like, oh, you're the 8th one of Clive's friends that I've talked to today, he goes, 8th. And I'm like, that's so mean.
Ryan: It's pretty mean. And, I'm like, what are they doing on the phone? Are they just declaring that they've gotten.
Laura: Married or that they've gotten engaged? They've got engaged and they're inviting him out to the manor.
Ryan: To the Clive Manor. Pendersley yes, to the, yeah. Clive has done everything in his power to hide.
Laura: His history with his history.
Ryan: With his homosexuality, effectively, which is over the course of the film. His journey is slightly more interesting because he's actually taken active steps to disguise the fact that he obviously has feelings for other men. and he's in a societal way because obviously society and his decisions and the career choice that he has made, it will not gel with the modern. It just won't gel with the world. That his choices. So he has to obviously create the veneer that he is the prototypical, high class man.
Laura: There are some people that prefer their careers and their professional lives over love. Yes. he maybe just cared more about living in that societal dream and having his career rather than being with Maurice And I really, really do think that throughout this whole thing, that Maurice is obviously way more into Clive than Clive is into him. Because Maurice never stops really loving him and being hurt. Even though they hang out all the time, especially after Clive gets married. He's there at Pendersley all the time.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: and he's just, like, not, being a little puppy boy about it and following him around. But you know that he's only there because he loves.
Ryan: He's just he has taken active steps that have probably taken him years to effectively indoctrinate himself and to bottle up his feelings, to the point where he is very negative about the feelings that Maurice has towards other men. when he starts to obviously confide in him about, ah, his leanings. and obviously the things that kind of happen, later on in the story, because this is when we introduce Scudder.
Laura: Oh, my gosh, Scudder.
Ryan: And who the fuck would fall in love with a man whose surname is fucking Scudder?
Laura: Scudder didn't choose that name.
Ryan: He didn't choose that name. But it's also like it was written that way. Yes, it could have been fucking anything. Hammersmith well, because he's an uneducated.
Laura: Man and, of a lower class.
Ryan: He'S a bit the thing is like, well, yeah, I think I called him a simpleton. You said, well, Ryan, it's probably easier to say uneducated. And I was like, yeah, that's probably.
Laura: A little bit because I do not think he's I do think that he just obviously didn't go to school because that's not how he grew up. His father was a butcher and he's the gameskeeper now and I don't know what it is.
Ryan: Well, yeah. I was calling him the Lawn boy.
Laura: Yeah, I did call him. I think he does the lawns, I said and we're like, oh, no, he's the game.
Ryan: Yeah. But, he's an interesting predicament in the course of the story.
Laura: And this guy, I mean, it takes hours, this movie. Scutter doesn't come in until kind of.
Ryan: Towards the end, near the, end.
Laura: Like more than halfway through the film, because we're following Clive and Maurice the whole time. And I'm thinking, like, this is a story of their love, because I didn't read the description beforehand. I kind of went in blind. I knew a little bit of what it was about, but I thought that this is a story of them getting together and their love story, but it's not.
Ryan: The only thing I would say about the fact that they don't follow I guess that particular tract is that eventually it starts to become a little bit like a little bit dull, this whole kind of like, does Clive love me? I don't think Clive loves me. Does Maurice love me? I don't think Maurice loves me. All this sort of thing. And they're like, meeting his friends and he's like, desperate to get them to the estate and all this sort of just it becomes this kind of cyclical in terms of the tension or the drama or the problems that the characters face scene by scene by scene is that there's this level of reciprocation. So I am glad that Scudder shows up.
Laura: Yeah. Because you know, it's never going to happen between he and like, there wasn't.
Ryan: A moment, it kind of just becomes a little bit you're just kind of like, oh, right, here we go.
Laura: Because Clive starts acting like a dick.
Ryan: He does start acting like a bit.
Laura: Of a, better than you. Oh, you're still more gay than I ever was.
Ryan: he basically turns into down to.
Laura: Him all the time.
Ryan: He turns into the modern day CIS male.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: He's just kind of like, well, I don't do shit like that anymore.
Laura: I was barely even gay.
Ryan: I wasn't gay. We were kissing. There's nothing gay but men kissing, is there? It's like it was a platonic kiss. You know what it is? Don't lie, Maurice
Laura: But we get some really not platonic and romance kisses when we get this scene where Scutter climbs in to, Morris's window.
Ryan: Nice. Scutter does a Cadbury's Milk Tray moment and jumps in through the window.
Laura: He does a window sneak. But it's not a window sneaking kiss. It's a window sneaking fuck. And it's awesome.
Ryan: He fucks the lawn boy. Yeah, he sure does.
Laura: He sure does. And they have a great time.
Ryan: They do. Yeah. This was the part where I fell asleep or something.
Laura: It was right before you fell asleep. Right before. And I was like, I'm turning this off because it's going to get hot.
Ryan: And heavy creeping in the window. yeah.
Laura: It was worth every moment we waited.
Ryan: Well, there's this other bit here that I remember where he's like because there's a fair amount of, they're as. They're kind of like undressing. And he's know Scutter's kissing his chest and stuff like on. Scutter keeps on calling him sir. And Maurice just pulls him in. He goes, I'm Maurice Which I loved. I loved it. Don't call me sir in the bedroom. It's Maurice
Laura: And this is probably his Morris's first real full sexual experience.
Ryan: Yeah. And also probably Scudders as well. But the thing is well, it's maybe not his first sexual experience, but maybe what I mean is like it's his first kind of romantic experience.
Laura: Like a full reciprocation.
Ryan: Full reciprocation. Well, the thing is, he's expecting that reciprocation. But what you do kind of get from Scutter is know, Maurice is obviously playing it quite close to his chest. He doesn't want to obviously know, use, the word love at this point and think but then it's obviously coming across to Scutter that Scutter is just like, well, I need you to come. I need to see you. We need to do this. He's like, he is falling head over heels for Maurice
Laura: Yeah. And Scutter's like, I'm not going to be your fuck boy. You better write m me back.
Ryan: Yeah. You better write me back. You better come to the know.
Laura: I'm not some one night stand. I'm special.
Ryan: I stayed in that boathouse for two nights waiting for you and you never showed. I was tired. And it's like, okay.
Ryan: But then there's also this is where the film actually gets quite interesting, though, is that they're meeting now, in secret. Scutter's coming to his place at work and he's coming in confrontational. I'm seeing things like blackmail. I'm saying, what's his problem? There's a point where they meet m Simon Callo again in the museum or wherever it is. Because there's all those artifacts from Persia, like all those things. Isn't that like the Valley of the Kings? Isn't that like the gates to the Valley of the Kings in, the Middle East or something like that? Or it's the same location from, the Last Crusade that doubles over as the site of the Grail. Anyway, let's see. But they meet Simon Callo and,
Laura: This is so weird.
Ryan: Fucking Scudder says that really weird thing where he's just like, because I'm just like, what's? Blackmail? He's just like, well, I've got something against this man.
Laura: and I'm serious charges to bring against this man. And that's the first thing he says when Simon Callo is going up to Maurice going, wait, I think I know you. I think I was your teacher. Which would be completely impossible for him to recognize as an adult. Man, that's so stupid.
Ryan: I remember drawing Jenna Taylie on the beach that one time when you were a young. Why?
Laura: Why did that interaction happen? I don't even know. I don't know if it's just to like because it could have been anybody.
Ryan: Laura teachers are weird. Some of them are just weird. And I remember telling well, I started telling people stories from work from my school because everyone kept on going on about, like, oh, my believe. I can't believe. Sometimes we had to shower after gym. And I was just like, well, we had a convicted, child, rapist as a history teacher at our school. And then we also had a gym teacher who, almost assaulted a young, girls at our school. And everyone's like, oh. And I'm like, yeah. I'm like, I think you guys maybe potentially having a shower together isn't really that much of a big deal in comparison to that story about that history teacher is wild. That story ended with that history teacher, being murdered and found in a wheelie bin after he came out of prison. It is unbelievably fucked. I do remember the man's name. I'm not going to say it. But all that story stuff, it's all still online to this day. It is wild.
Laura: Yeah. Send us a message. Ryan will send you the link.
Ryan: I will send you the link to.
Laura: Did I ever tell you about the story about we had a substitute history teacher? Okay, this is bad. And I think that's the first pair of balls I ever saw. Because he was in class and he took his pants down behind the desk. And so he was just sitting behind the desk in his chair the fuck with his pants down. And I think I maybe dropped something and I went to bend down and grab it. And I looked over. I was like, oh my god. That guy's dick and balls in class. And of course I went around and told everybody. And then, obviously he was escorted off the premises. High school.
Ryan: This isn't a slight against people who are like actively they're good teachers and you're nice to your students and stuff like that. But there's a percentage of people who are like because most of us don't like children. I mean, to be fair, most of us don't like kids.
Laura: This is not a slight against teachers whatsoever.
Ryan: Because choose to work with children, all.
Laura: Of the teachers need to get paid more.
Ryan: Unless you're a weirdo. Unless you're a fucking weirdo.
Laura: That's just because the world is weird and there's weirdos everywhere. And so you're always going to get a little bit of weird wherever you are. And unfortunately, we both have stories about.
Ryan: Yeah, I wasn't yeah, luckily I wasn't anyone's pudding. I wasn't that like in school.
Laura: Correct. Neither was I. Yeah.
Ryan: so I'm quite happy of that fact. But yeah. I mean that that story that story just blows my fucking mind every time I think about it.
Laura: Teacher in this movie is one of those weird ones. Even though he doesn't necessarily do anything too weird. But it definitely comes across weird.
Ryan: Like he oversteps his bounds. Like it's strange.
Laura: I still don't know why he would take him aside as a child. So strange. But yeah, that moment because Scutter's here and it does seem like he's here's the thing.
Ryan: Maybe he took him aside because he could see things in that child who maybe kind of a little bit because we don't know what Maurice was like as a kid. Maybe he saw things in that child where we're like, he's doing kind of weird. He's not looking at women the same way. Or he's got like a weird attraction to some of the other boys in the school.
Ryan: Maybe like that. I'm not defending Simon Callo's character here because I still think it's fucking OD. You shouldn't be doing that. but at the same time, that is a slight defense of the creepo.
Laura: I did also think about it. But we don't have enough reference to.
Ryan: Make that no, it's not in the movie. So how I'm just making these assumptions. Unless it's in the book. But supposedly the book's a horrible piece of literature, according to the Cambridge so who mean if they don't even like the thing that they were gifted by the original offer, then I don't really know what to say.
Laura: Maybe I should read that book.
Ryan: yeah, maybe you should. And then you can paraphrase it to me.
Laura: But it's an interesting thing at this moment because you have Scutter and it looks like he's trying to blackmail Maurice And Maurice is super conflicted. So you're over here going, he's blackmailing him. He's going to do something horrible. This is going to end really bad. And I go, I think he's just hurt. I think he's just upset that he feels jilted, that he feels used. And I think he was. Saying that this was his first love affair with a man as well. And so he's feeling very vulnerable. And I think he just kind of came at him with a lot of energy that was a bit off, but when they finally ended up being able to speak about it, is where we have our second penis scene.
Ryan: This is a scene that's kind of post quietle. They have sex on what looks like the tiniest bed ever.
Laura: It looks like the bed that we first had when we met.
Ryan: Yes. Except obviously, I don't think the bed that they were sleeping in had, like, casters on it. And, I mean, we broke that bed.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: eventually, to the point where I had to fix the bed and I had to take the casters off the bottom of the bed, whatever.
Laura: Weird.
Ryan: Yeah, well, your landlord was a fucking psychopath. but it's postcoital, and in kind of James Ivory fashion, everything's very it's very innocuous, the nudity. it's also incredibly clear. And you can see it all. And he does these shots where cameras set and the action plays out, and it's engaging. Like, he does a lot of these one scene oners, and stuff like that. And this is one of these moments where there's no real need to cut to a close up. There's no real need to kind of develop the shoot any more than what we are just seeing here. So it all kind of ends up with this kind of midwide in this room. And they're conversing, they're talking. It's post quietal kind of interactions and stuff. And, Scudder gets out the bed first. And because of, obviously, the way that it is, like, he comes around the bed, he's all completely naked. We're all seeing things completely there. And then he puts a shirt on, he starts Porky Pigging it.
Laura: Ah.
Ryan: And then Maurice is in the bed. And then he starts to kind of sell. We don't see as much of that, because, again, I think the lights coming from the windows, it's all quite kind of backlit and stuff. so you're not seeing as much of that, but what you're kind of seeing. And kind of what I like about these interactions and what I think is for worse or for whatever, in terms of we've covered a lot of Westernized, depictions of homosexual kind of love stories. We've done, like, Brokeback, and we've obviously done this film here. And then obviously short bus as well. which obviously has quite a lot of that, too. so I feel like Short Bus is the outlier because it's a lot more casual. It's like, it's fun. Like, everyone's having a good time. It's all consensual, everything's fine. That's not to say that brought back and stuff isn't there, but I feel like Brought Back and this movie share, the same kind of general, I would say, like Cliches and Principles of westernized gay cinema where the sex is rough. It's ready. It's two men, just like, we're going to have sex. We love each other so much. And to me, it comes across a little bit this is a nice moment that kind of counteracts that level of cliche.
Laura: I feel like I agree there's a lot of tenderness here, especially after kind of the conflicts that they had just previously, where they're figuring out they're figuring each other out. Like, what do you want? Where are we going with this? Is this a real thing that we have between us? And they're able to have a cuddle and chat and be casual with each other because guess what? Once people have sex, they get naked. so it makes sense for that situation. And, you know, I love that casual nudity because you want that kind of to be a reflection of what people deal with in real life.
Ryan: It helps to solidify a level of realism to the experience.
Laura: If he got out of bed, especially as that character of Scutter, if he got out of bed with the blanket on, I'd go, what? he seems incredibly comfortable in his skin.
Ryan: It'd be a weird scenario as well, because there's obviously two people in this bed.
Laura: There's no one else there.
Ryan: Well, you're just taking the blanket away from the person who's already continuing in the bed. So it'd be very weird. But it's kind of like and I don't know, this is kind of something I picked up on, but him having that moment, that sex kind of calmed Scutter down a little bit because he was getting a little bit mouthy.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: Just getting a little bit too he.
Laura: Had to get his rocks off, and then he's able to be and Scutter.
Ryan: Is obviously no bottom.
Laura: No, I don't think so.
Ryan: It's obviously Maurice is the sloppy party. it's obvious that Scutter's running the show.
Laura: We don't know what they did in bed. They could have just touched each other's bits and explored each other's bodies. We don't know what they did, but we know that it was all in love. All about love.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: by the way that comes in, we kind of skipped over it. 2 hours, 1 minute, 38 seconds is that second penis scene, that love scene. So we're getting really close to the end of the film.
Ryan: We are getting really close to the end of the film.
Laura: literally have one other thing written about the film.
Ryan: Oh, okay.
Laura: That's it. I don't know if you have more, but it's a conversation between Clive and.
Ryan: Like, that once Scudder comes into the picture, the film starts to become a little bit more interesting. And you're also, like, in the back of your mind, because of the conventions of this story, and certainly this story told within a Westernized, I guess the idealistic, you've got the idealistic blinkers on when you watch certain movies. And because obviously, homosexuality is the outlier. Ah. You immediately go straight to the negative. Right. So you think there's going to be death, there's going to be the police, something bad's going to happen, some trauma.
Laura: Some guy's going to find out that this guy's gay and beat him up. And also this postcoidal scene, by the way, is when Scutter lets Maurice know he's never going to see him again, that he's leaving. He's leaving like tomorrow.
Ryan: Yeah. Because he's going to go on that mission. Right.
Laura: Yeah. To Buenos Aires. And so this is it for him. Even though Maurice is telling know, we can figure this out, we can be together, we don't need M money, we don't need titles.
Ryan: But he goes to meet him at the boat, right?
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: And he doesn't show up. So he immediately Maurice is like, oh, he's sacrificing his career for me. Which again, is an incredibly selfish thing to think. I mean, he could have just thought to himself, well, no, I don't want to go to Buenos Aires to do religious stuff. this is a moment where, like.
Laura: You were just saying you're like, he's been beaten up, he's killed himself, or no, no, it's love, he's okay, everything's okay. Because we have to remember, this is a James Ivory picture and nothing really that bad happens in his movies. Everyone is having a nice time.
Ryan: I mean, here's the thing. James says it himself in the featurettes on the Criterion disc that we have, where he's just like you immediately go to the negative because that's what you expect.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Because of the time period, this and he's like even he was surprised reading, obviously, the Forster novel, that it ends happily for the most part. but we'll get to the ending.
Ryan: I feel like we just kind of want to cover we cover, I guess, the full indoctrination of obviously, Clive. And he's just so annoyed.
Laura: I'm so annoyed by this conversation because Maurice as soon as he finds out that Scutter didn't get on that boat, he immediately goes to Pendersley and he goes to talk to Clive and he tells him, he goes, listen, I'm in love with Scudder. And for whatever reason, Clive, before he mentions that it's Scutter that he's in love with, he thinks he's talking about a woman. He goes, you got to go talk to Anne. women know women like, how delusional are you? This man has never changed. This man has been himself 100% of the time. He's never tried to be well, he's never put into action trying to be something that he's not. Obviously, the hypnotism thing is silly and is never going to work because you are who you are.
Ryan: But the thing is, when Anne does the sacred right, and then that's when her slugs kiss and she's able to foresee what happens in the future. That's, why Anne Woods is incredibly, incredibly important to the story. That's just the scene that we never got to see. I wish we're magic slugs those magic slugs.
Laura: Clive is incredibly repressed. I think he's not a very good friend. And for whatever reason, he's appalled at the news that his friend that has been gay forever is also still gay.
Ryan: Oh, no.
Laura: Oh, no. You're gay still.
Ryan: I can't believe you're still gay.
Laura: How did that happen? You're also I haven't been paying attention to your life.
Ryan: And I have also been playing with you and having you come over and.
Laura: Touching your hand, touching your hands and.
Ryan: Being flirty, kissing you on the cheek because I'm a big Hugh Grant flirt. Yeah.
Laura: asshole. Playing with this guy.
Ryan: Here's the thing. And I like the kind of level of depth because the conversation isn't as surface level as that. Because, it's obvious that Hugh Grant is still harboring he can't bury that stuff deep enough so that he can seemingly just get on with his prototypical, inadvertent, commas, normal existence. He cannot change the way that he is built. There's no way that he can do that.
Laura: And I also think that selfishly. Clive likes having that around. He likes having Maurice around. He likes the attention. he likes being able to kind of have that guy around and be flirty and mess with him. I think he likes that power.
Ryan: And I think that's enough for him so he doesn't jeopardize the other things in his life. I think that's basically it. And you can tell there's moments within the movie, certainly. I think Anne's asleep and she sees or turns over and sees, Clive getting dressed for bed and stuff. And she sees a little bit more than what she was expecting. And she turns over really quickly. So there's obviously a kind of divide or at least a kind mean, I guess, like a kind of traditional divide between the two where they don't see each other naked all the time. Or there's not a kind of sense of an open freeness with the nudity between them and stuff like that. Which I think is quite interesting.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: But his conversation is very much a kind of like he's warning him and telling him, like, one, you can't be gay. Two, you have to stamp that shit out. He's like, Three, is the fucking therapy not working? Even the hypnotist is useless. Effectively, yes, because he's just like, I can't help you because you are distracted. I cannot put you to sleep. Like all this sort of stuff. Because obviously Maurice is too gay. well, it's nonsense. Yeah, well, it's just not going to work. It's not going to work. but end of the day, he goes to the boathouse.
Laura: He finally goes to the boathouse.
Ryan: And I'm, like, fully expecting to see scudder, like, hanging off the rafters.
Laura: No.
Ryan: And it didn't really happen. There's a fire going as well. Like, he's got a wee fire.
Laura: He's got a romance fire.
Ryan: He's probably blazing, lying there for four days in a kind of sleepy trance. And I think it's like he, meets. Yeah, he sees him. He just sees him there. And even I was just like, what the fuck? He's just there.
Laura: Yeah, he's waiting for him. and they're going to be together. And they embrace. And they have the wettest, sloppiest kiss I've ever seen. And Scutter gets his wet lips right on his ear.
Ryan: I just want to say this again. We shall never be parted.
Laura: We shall never be parted.
Ryan: And you're just looking at it and.
Laura: I'm like, fuck yeah.
Ryan: I mean, you look at like it's an image. It's a moment. His lips are like soaking wet. He gets them real close to Morris's ear and he's like, we shall never be partied. It's just like hot fucking breath of death.
Laura: Okay?
Ryan: Just fucking breathing into his ear.
Laura: Thought it was romantic and very, sexual.
Ryan: I mean, I guess enlightened. I love it either way.
Ryan: The film ends very happily. And I think one of the nicest parts of the movie and I'm glad they do it, is they do show Clive at the window. And he's looking out and he has that little memory of when he saw Maurice out in the courtyard, at the college. And he's like waving at him and stuff like that. And that was probably the most emotional part of the movie for me because it's obvious that there's still something kind of harboring there just under the surface.
Laura: But he's going to let him go and have his love. And I thought that was very sweet.
Ryan: Yes. He's going to conform to the norms of society of that time. And he's going to hide his homosexuality.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: And yeah. I'm assuming if we did continue with the story, let's say if the film was like 5 hours long or whatever, I'm assuming they would not be able to keep their gay relationship scutter and Maurice obviously, they wouldn't be able to keep their gay relationship as hidden as they would probably want it to.
Laura: I'm 100% okay with the movie ending where it is. I like a love story. It's beautiful. The struggles that they will face. The issue is obviously and it's not even just about having that a, homosexual relationship. It's even a class struggle between the two of them. How they're going to work it out, I don't know.
Ryan: The issue I have with the ending and this is all I'll kind of say about it, is the only reason it's a happy ending is that it completely excludes the potentials of reality, coming into the story at any point.
Laura: That's okay.
Ryan: And that's fine because it's obviously happening.
Laura: That's how fairytale endings end as well. Because you think about it, you go, wait a second, this is going to not be great in a couple of years.
Ryan: Every Disney film ends that way. I'm pretty sure the Beast from Beauty and the Beast is probably not a nice person.
Laura: He's probably still an asshole.
Ryan: He's probably a complete asshole because he calls himself a fucking asshole. Well, not in the movie, he's not. Good. I'm an asshole. Belle, I'm really sorry. but yeah, that's the issue I have with just the ending in general, is that it is the fairy tale ending. And it's like that Westernized that kind of Westernized ending. So I have to dock it a little bit for that. But that's the only way you get a happy ending in a story like this, I guess, of the time and obviously of the period and things like that.
Laura: You got to end it somewhere. Might as well end it there.
Ryan: Yes. I wish it ended an hour before, though. That would have been nice. it's too long, really? Yeah.
Laura: That's okay.
Laura: Would you like to hear my extra tidbits before we wrap this bad boy up? M. Okay. So because Hugh Grant and James Wilby knew each other because they were in the movie Privileged that's the name of the film from 1982. they practiced their scenes together at Hugh Grant's house. And Hugh Grant remembers it being a surprise to my banker brother when he came home and found me kissing James Wilby in my front room.
Ryan: I mean, it's probably not the first or the last time.
Laura: I hope.
Ryan: Not ever happened.
Laura: Yeah, the film had no rehearsal time whatsoever. The production was 54 days and had six day working weeks, which is interesting because James Ivory said that he picked this particular book and adaptation to make this film because he thought it would be very simple. And then it ended up spiraling a bit and being a little bit more difficult than he expected. And I find it surprising that he thought this was going to be easy because, I mean, it looks expensive.
Ryan: It looks expensive. It looks like it took a long time. It looks like it needed polished.
Laura: It's beautiful. The costumes, like, everything is because I.
Ryan: Think James Ivory I don't know if this is like kind of early on. it probably isn't. But because of the he's got a team. And I think he's got an incredibly disciplined team because Ivory Merchant obviously productions just as a like it's an incredibly polished production team making films of this ilk for years, for decades, effectively. so this is either like teething idea and I'm kind of assuming it's either Teething issues, obviously, or there are certain elements within the production where you're just kind of like, okay, we need to take a little bit more time with this because the film itself feels very delicate as well. Yeah.
Laura: let's see, what else do I have? So in 2017, The New Yorker did a retrospective on the film and stated, for many gay men coming of age in the was relevatory a first glimpse on screen or anywhere of what love between men could look like.
Ryan: Yeah. At least it feels very honest because, it's not, like, over exaggerated, but it's honest for the period it's depicting, though, which is something that I also like.
Laura: I'm still happy. It's just a nice gay, love story instead of just trauma, I guess.
Ryan: So I think that's obviously kind of where things kind of go. I mean, I like the fact that it's, like, none of the cliches of what you would expect from quite an outwardly gay film of now, kind of what you expect from, say, certain films of that type. Now, it feels incredibly grounded.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Because there's a real kind of, not to say that these films are bad, but we've seen films in the last kind of few years that have been kind of outwardly kind of pieces of gay cinema, which I don't feel like are contributing to the overall message of gay cinema, which has been going on for decades. Gay cinema, in terms of queer cinema in general, is decades old. It is as old as, the birth of film as well. So I feel like this, in a way, this movie does. It adds to that pantheon more so than even with decades worth of experience and knowledge and I would say even like societal acceptance of homosexuality that many modern films, I feel like either dwindle away or they just don't add to the conversation and they feel kind of a little bit shallow. At least with this, it feels like it's like, okay, historically, this is an interesting part in history, and it does have a happy ending. Yeah.
Laura: okay, so, James, Ivory said, about the filming, of Maurice and kind of the nudity aspects of it. He said that everyone really got into the thing, and even though that was 30 years ago, there was no fear about the subject matter or worrying about what people would say. The only difference, and it may be a difference in the two nationalities, is that Maurice was made in England, and they do not give a damn about taking their clothes off and being completely naked. And that has all changed. It's very, very rare in any kind of mainline movie where anybody takes all of his clothes off. Unlike women, I see them naked all the time, but not men anymore. So that was different.
Ryan: I think a lot of it has to do with the mass marketability, of films now where the budgets are so fucking huge, they're massive. Even films that you think are relatively quite small, the budgets are absolutely astronomical. And that's because they're trying to tap into the Chinese market as well. unless you're perfectly happy with being as independent as you want to, you can make as real a story as you like. You're just not getting any return on investment from it, and you're just not going to progress to the heady heights that you might do as a filmmaker. That's just, unfortunately, the back and forth that many are dealing with now. And that's not to say that mainstream movies are good. I mean, naturally, mainstream movies, like the big budget films that you see now, they're not good. I wouldn't say they're memorable pieces of cinema. But this is unfortunately just the kind of way we are now.
Laura: It's terrible.
Ryan: It's just not good. But you do see your we saw Red Rocket a couple of years ago. There's plenty of films that are effectively streaming only, that are kind of exploring those things. And we're going to cover a few of them over the course of this period. But it's where contextually, that's when we start to ask a lot more kind of questions, and then we talk about, like, is this real of idea?
Laura: so an interviewer asked James Wilby if he regrets the nudity in the film. And he said, no.
Ryan: Such a weird question as well.
Laura: I know. Well, he had a great answer. He goes, no. Well, on one level, it's about sex, isn't it? I think sex is about sweat and semen. So no. Absolutely. God, no. It was quite tastefully done. I mean, it's mainly me, but the fact that, coming out of bed with Rupert Graves playing Scutter, and the fact that we're both naked, you know, that's what happened. It's about sex and the need for sex for all of us, and the closeness of another human body that is life affirming, I think. Yeah.
Ryan: no, I think it comes down to is your film honest or not?
Laura: Yeah. And I think that was well achieved.
Laura: the last little kind of quote I have, is apparently the question that James Wilby gets asked the most often is if he had any issues playing a gay character. And he said, yeah. He goes, it's more of an American thing. You know, that American actors tend to have this problem about playing gay characters or characters which are perceived as weak. British actors do not worry about it too much. I, didn't write this down, but he also said if someone asked me to play Hitler, yeah, I'd probably play him. If it's interesting, he's like, I'm an actor, so I'll just do the acting because that's my job. yeah. So kind of with him for that.
Ryan: Yeah. No, I think, it comes down to me, it always comes down to how honest do you want your film to be? And for the most part, I feel like modern cinema in general, at least now, it feels like there's a level of being disingenuous.
Laura: It's just oversaturation, because I don't want to just do that overarching thing that say that it's disingenuous. Because there's a lot of films that we've seen we've seen some recently that are just so that are honest and sweet and heartfelt. like we saw Past Lives the other day.
Ryan: Yes. And that film's not about sex.
Laura: No.
Ryan: There is no element about that. That's, overtly sexual.
Laura: It's just an incredibly nice yeah.
Ryan: It's just about love and the emotion of love and connecting and human connection, that sort of thing. And again, that's also a very honest film.
Laura: Yeah. So it's hard to say you don't want to just say that if we're talking about your Fast X and whatever, spider man and all this type of stuff. Obviously we have these big movies that are doing something different than this film is.
Ryan: Yeah. But also Fast X has a very kind of outwardly, quite metrosexual villain at the heart of it as well. Which is interesting because they think that stuff's okay to play out, in a pantomime sort of sense, in obviously the wider market. So I'm not using it as like a prime example. It's not like Pasolini or anything like that. Something like that's probably not going to fly like it did back then. Christ didn't even really fly that well back then. But, yeah, it's interesting to kind of I like this idea of using it as a sense of how honest is your film trying to be? That's a far more cutting question than if, an actor has an issue playing a gay man or know.
Laura: there are a couple of accolades I'm just going to mention before we jump into our ratings, but, this had an Academy Award nomination for best Costume Design, but lost to The Last Emperor. But, james Ivory won the Silver Lion for best directing at the Venice Film Festival for this.
Ryan: I think, obviously, the more we kind of COVID his, it's like, it's solid film technique with a very, kind of emotional center, which I think is good.
Laura: I mentioned Thatcher before, but I don't think I went into detail. I just have it.
Ryan: Okay.
Laura: So apparently the film did really well in Italy and in America, but did not do as well as England. And James Ivory blames Thatcher and the enactment of Clause 28, which were a series of laws across Britain that prohibited the, quote, promotion of homosexuality.
Ryan: Yes, around 88 or so. And we don't need to go into it, but the Conservative Party at the time was actively weaponizing AIDS, against the gay community. disgusting.
Laura: How dare she?
Ryan: They refer to it yeah, they refer to it as the gay disease, that sort of thing. yeah. It was a horrible time, but she's in the grave now.
Laura: Hurrah. So, I'm going to go ahead and go first in terms of visibility and context. For me, this seems like a home run five.
Ryan: Yeah, I would probably agree with you there.
Laura: I don't even think yeah, we don't need to super casual and perfectly,
Ryan: Placed placed within the context of the story and of their relationship. It would feel incredibly weird if Rupert Graves got out of that bed and he's wearing underwear.
Laura: Yes. So that's exactly strange. You're talking about how honest is your like, that scene shows it perfectly.
Ryan: Yeah, it makes complete sense. So I don't have and the locker room moment, is also incredibly honest because it's not like in some things that we see now, where they're wearing, like, flesh panties. You know what I mean?
Laura: It's like that flesh panties and, like a holographic, overlane dick.
Ryan: we covered Lawn Dogs not too long ago. And the version, unfortunately, that most people are able to see for free on Tubi is the edited version where you see a Sam Rockwell dive into the river whilst wearing his underwear.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: And it's kind of like the underwear cut. Yeah. It's also a very weird, disingenuous kind of thing to do, because who would then want to just wear their soggy underwear after that? It doesn't make any sense.
Laura: Not honest.
Ryan: Yes. So I do like this inclusion of feeling like we cover things and giving it an idea of how honest is your picture? yeah, because of how disingenuous I feel a lot of modern media can be. And I mean media in terms of content media, not the media. I don't want to be labeled as one of those crazy people who's, like, worried about the news all the time.
Laura: are you with me on a five?
Ryan: I'm with you on a five.
Laura: I wanted to call that I don't know if I said it in a previous episode, but I wanted to call it pulling into the Docking Station when we share the same ratings.
Ryan: I think you brought it up before, but then I just kind of actively ignored it. Yeah.
Laura: and in terms of the film overall, I gave it a four. the only reason it didn't go higher, genuinely, is because it's really long. It could lose a lot and still be really wonderful. But it is a really pleasant film to watch. And I don't think it loses too much momentum, but I think it could be tightened up a bit, personally.
Ryan: Yeah. I feel like just because it has almost every single inclusion from the book inside the movie, that that necessarily makes to not a good film that make watch, I think, is what I'm trying.
Laura: It doesn't need to be a perfect adaptation.
Ryan: It doesn't have to be a perfect adaptation.
Laura: They did change.
Ryan: Feel like I feel like that's fine when you're doing a book novelize, it like a novelization kind of translation into a cinematic sense. And that's okay if it feels like it's improving upon it. I feel like, obviously, Fight Club is a very good example of that. I think the film version is a better written piece than the book, but the book's a very good framework and has all the same ideas and stuff anyway to, each throne. But. Anyway, for me, it started off at a three, and then obviously, that first half of the movie, like, that first hour and a half hour, 40 minutes does get to the point of feeling a little bit dry after you feel like you get a little bit of the wetness at the beginning of the film. but the minute the scutter stuff starts to come up and obviously it's after the moment where the mustaches, are swapped over, the film starts to get a little bit more interesting. And, I gave it a three and a half because I think that memory at the end of the movie between obviously, Clive and Maurice or Maurice Sorry, I did it again. Fuck. If I could do this. We've been there an hour and 40 minutes. but yeah, no, I think there's that stuff there that I feel like kind of elevates the film a little bit. But for me, it's far too long. It's just a little bit dry. And it has these really nice moments in it. And I like, obviously, all the honesty within the picture in terms of the nudity and things. And also, it's really unfortunate just Willoughby's not able to deliver the sort of center performance that I want from a film this long when he is, like, dying of starvation, when he's in other scenes with even fucking, Denham Elliott, who's picture perfect, like, fantastic in the role that he's in. And he's just dwarfing Wilby in these moments. And obviously, whenever Hugh Grant's around, it's like, game over for Willby, unfortunately. But, yeah. it's still a good film, though, I think, for people who like a period film and a period film of like this. I think this is actually an interesting piece of gay cinema. yeah, I think it should be regarded higher. It's just a shame it's just a little bit too long.
Laura: Got you. Yeah, I liked it. Yeah. Happy?
Ryan: Good.
Laura: Well, thank you so much. I was so glad we got to do this movie. It's been on the list for a long time. And, it paid off.
Ryan: Clean up.
Laura: Cleaning up that ivory.
Ryan: Yes, I think there's more ivory to come.
Laura: yeah, there is. Don't worry. Don't worry. well, coming to you from the Pendersley boathouse, I have the Laura.
Ryan: we shan't never be parted because we're in love. yeah, we're in the boathouse. I'm writing forever, like. Yeah. Barely legible letters in the boathouse.
Laura: Great.
Ryan: Let me construct a sentence for you, my love.
Laura: we'll see you next time. thanks for being here.
Ryan: Yay. Bye.