Reactions

To me, watching the movie of Maurice was interesting on more than one level. I was looking around the room to see other people’s reactions to try and understand the way people of our time respond to situations where homosexual intimacy and love are present. It seemed to me that some of the guys in the class might have been uncomfortable with the intimate situations in the film which made me think about the conversations we had in class about male nudity in U.S. movies vs. abroad. Perhaps it is the social situation in which we are presented that really persuades our mindset into reactions like this one. My point is that while us women were not uncomfortable with viewing the movie, some of the men seemed surprised or squirmy with the situation.

Other than the observations I tried to view outside the movie, the movie itself was only slightly different from the book. Mainly, hearing the English accent and language while viewing reactions and unspoken body language definitely helped me understand the language better. It is so unusual how the same language spoken in two different countries can vary so much, and the social situations can vary also. The movie helped me understand the prudeness of the entire area and time of the setting, and the portrayal of the love between Maurice and Clive was clearly displayed and believed; however, I did notice a few differences in the movie, such as the letter from Clive to Maurice from Greece that did not show up in the movie, while the Greek ties to sexuality were clearly not as abundant and profound as in the book. I believe the foreshadowing of the Greek studies and conversations were very important to understanding and believing the love that exists in the book; which would have been more pertinent had it existed as robustly in the movie.