Muppet Scholar

I love this quote and the point it's making, HOWEVER it does deeply frustrate me that this statement, which is supposedly about the book rests it conclusion on something that does not even happen in the novel. Maurice does not help Alec move the piano in the book, he only does so in the movie. He just watches him do it while picking a book to read from the bookshelf. I think its one of the best innovations made by the film adaptation and its frustrating to see it misattributed in the Penguin introduction.

the different ways people react to and about the movie maurice (1987) says a lot about someone…… to me it’s truly the real test of media literacy. like what do you mean you hate clive or you think clive is a villain or traitor or prefer maurice ending up with clive instead of alec. like what do you mean. what do you mean you view clive as the villain in the story when truly there’s no villain except the criminalization of homosexuality and the alienation towards queer people in this time period. what do you mean you don’t view clive’s character as a tragedy and a realistic commentary on a gay man of the higher class in early 20th century england who chooses to force himself deeper into the closer to protect his name, image and career….. what do you mean you see him as a selfish villain who cares only about himself when to him, he didn’t understand or accept himself and his sexuality and decided to give up his love for maurice to protect himself (and to him, maurice) when maurice chose to accept himself and his sexuality instead. what do you mean you think clive is better for maurice instead of alec who fought and chased maurice due to his love for him, unlike clive. what do you mean

So, I just watched Maurice again (naturally) and this time I decided to watch all of the deleted scenes, which I hadn't watched on the disc yet. And I just have to ask, does anyone have any idea what they were going for with the Alternate Opening Sequence?? It's so long and nonsensical that I literally apologized to the person I was watching it with several times 😂 We even went back to watch the beginning of it with commentary to see if that explained anything, but basically they (I can't remember who was giving the commentary lol) just said they wanted the film to be in flashback format? Which still doesn't make sense because the scenes in that sequence were all over the place and definitely were not conveying "flashback" lol