Maurice

 
At King’s College, Cambridge in 1909, fellow students Maurice Hall and Clive Durham feel more for each other than mere friendship. But sexual contact, never mind the “unspeakable vice of the Greeks” as their Plato professor calls it, remains taboo. For fear of being ostracised, like one of their classmates, they keep their love secret. Later, after Clive has made a marriage befitting his station, they maintain a purely platonic friendship. When Maurice begins a relationship with the Durham’s gamekeeper, it seems as if he has found happiness ... Following their Oscar-winning turn with A Room with a View (1985), the team of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant took on this second film based on a book by E.M. Forster; although the novel had been written in 1913/14, it could not be published until after his death in 1970. In melancholy tones, the film deals sensitively with the grief of a forbidden love. The rigorously detailed production design precisely captures the Edwardian zeitgeist, while at the same time, the exquisite composition of the camerawork reveals the narrow-mindedness of a society in which prudery and hypocrisy rule. – World premiere of the digitally restored 4K DCP version.