strange and random happenstance

Rebecca
Based on the Book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Emilia Fox, Charles Dance, Faye Dunaway, John Horsley, Jonathan Stokes, Diana Rigg, Tom Chadbon, Geraldine James, Denis Lill, John Branwell, Jonathan Cake, Kelly Reilly, Anthony Bate, Ian McDiarmid, Timothy West, and Lucy Cohu
Release Date: April 13th, 1997
Rating: ★
To Buy

The gregarious Mrs. Van Hopper has hired herself a mousy little companion to accompany her to Monte Carlo. Yet she's put out that the old crowd aren't around and then laid up with a sniffle. Her young companion uses this time to become close to the one person in Monte Mrs. Van Hopper is fascinated with, Maxim de Winter, the inconsolable widow and owner of the great house Manderley. When Mrs. Van Hopper decides to decamp Maxim gives the little mouse a choice, go to New York with her employer or come to Manderley with him as his wife. It isn't a hard choice to embrace being the second Mrs. de Winter, a choice that even Mrs. Van Hopper approves, because at least someone bagged him. Back at his luxurious estate in England Maxim's young new wife feels that the shadow of his first wife, Rebecca, looms large. But even despite the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and her doom and gloom, nothing can stop the newlyweds love for each other. That is unless Maxim is still in love with Rebecca... the discovery of Rebecca's scuttled boat in the bay will try their relationship, destroying everything or bringing them closer together.

The 1996-1997 season of Masterpiece Theatre was rare for me in that I caught it entirely. I was taking a year off before college and therefore had time to luxuriate in my much loved passions of reading and watching miniseries. The adaptation of Nostromo starring Colin Firth and A Royal Scandal starring Richard E. Grant were highlights that year. In fact when I recently learned A Royal Scandal was an extra on The Queen's Sister I instantly bought the DVD, despite my dislike of The Queen's Sister. Now if they'd just release Nostromo on anything other than VHS I'd be set because I'm seriously dying with only my old taped copy. But what I wasn't looking forward to was the season ending remake of Rebecca. This was at the height of my Hitchcock fanaticism, having taken film classes in high school and planning on taking more in college, and I couldn't comprehend why anyone would remake a classic.

Yes, Hitchcock didn't get it 100% right, but you can not deny that Laurence Olivier IS Maxim de Winter. It won best picture at the Oscars! So I planned to boycott the remake. The problem when living with your parents is that they have their own opinions on what they want to watch and seeing some of Rebecca turned out to be unavoidable. What little I saw made me instantly withdraw from the television room. My mom didn't last very long either, despite her love of Diana Rigg. For almost twenty years I have shunned this adaptation shuddering from the memory of those few glimpses. So I thought perhaps I should give it a second chance. Maybe Diana Rigg could be a superior Mrs. Danvers? Perhaps the beauty of Manderley would be done more justice in color with it's lush abundant floral growth? Or perhaps I should have trusted my gut reaction and avoided this piece of crap entirely.

What is striking about this adaptation is they have assembled some of the most talented actors in the British Isles and beyond and somehow sucked the life out of them. If it weren't for Faye Dunaway and Jonathan Cake I don't think a single line would have been uttered above a dull monotone. Rebecca is full of emotion and passion, both repressed and on full display, and yet here it comes across as the most flat and emotionless story ever. It should be turbulent and forceful like the sea, not fake and false like that shitty shack that was slapped together on the beach. After the first episode my dislike became more and more audible. Three hours and nothing went right. I was visibly cringing at all that they got wrong. The second Mrs. de Winter isn't just shy with a can do attitude but meek! Oh the rage! But even if I hadn't been comparing it to the book, it was awful. I kept making myself step back and think, if I hadn't read the book would I enjoy this? The answer was no time and time again.

While the heavy-handed foreshadowing might have been driving me loopy, if Du Maurier was still alive I know what she'd hate most... they made this adaptation into a romance. Yes, there are romantic elements in Rebecca, but that is NOT what the book is. The moniker of "Romance Writer" hung around Du Maurier's neck like a millstone her entire life. To have her greatest novel reduced to being nothing more than a romance? No. She would have snapped. Plus, I like Charles Dance very much, don't get me wrong, his performance of himself in Jam and Jerusalem, Clatterford stateside, is one of my favorite cameos on TV ever; but to see him groping and pawing awkwardly at Emilia Fox's cheek and sucking her face so that it looks like he's eating her. Eww. The book STRONGLY hints that the de Winters had a sexless marriage and yet here the demonstrative affection is overwhelming. It's the exact opposite of the book, yet oddly passionless. And that lame excuse made for their lack of children? Like Maxim would run into a burning building to save Mrs. Danvers? NO!

Yet, I have to give props where props are due. These go to Diana Rigg and Jonathan Cake, Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell, Rebecca's maid and blackmailing cousin, respectively. I think these two actually read the source material, which Arthur Hopcraft obviously didn't when adapting this because who would purposefully change the famous introductory chapter and slap it into an upbeat coda? But enough about Arthur Hopcraft because this obviously ended his career if you check out IMDB. As for Hitchcock he proves that even the greats can get it wrong and he just didn't get Mrs. Danvers, and went camp and over the top. Diana Rigg nails it. The sadness that is behind that stiff facade. As for Cake, I don't think I can pay him a higher compliment than saying I really thought he WAS Favell. Rigg and Cake got the menacing down perfectly. Yet they also had the depth Du Maurier demanded of these characters. While they had the menace, they also had the vulnerability, and ultimately the patheticness of these two and how hollow their last act, destroying Manderley, really is.

But in the end, seeing as this miniseries was called Rebecca, you'd think they'd at least get her right? Yet they didn't. It's almost as if Rebecca is an afterthought. She should be front and center, there, oppressing Maxim and his new wife every single second of their time at Manderley, but she's oddly not there. It's like Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell are the only ones who remember and it's only when they are around that Rebecca still lives. Otherwise it's as if she's long dead and long gone, not "haunting" them as should be the case. But this couldn't very well have been a romance if they concentrated on the Gothic nature of the book with Rebecca haunting Manderley now could it? As for when Rebecca actually appears... she's impressionistic and the camera is just too fucking close to her face. I wouldn't know it was Lucy Cohu, an actress I quite like who stared in the aforementioned movie The Queen's Sister, if it wasn't for the credits. Therefore we can say that like the book, there's a problem with Rebecca. Here it's her irrelevancy, there it's her possession of you body and soul. Let the book possess you and avoid this catastrophe. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Charles Dance, Daphne Du Maurier, Diana Rigg, Du Maurier December, Emilia Fox, Hitchcock, Jonathan Cake, Lucy Cohu, Manderley, Masterpiece Theater, Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca, Richard E. Grant, Romance

Rebecca
Based on the Book by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Emilia Fox, Charles Dance, Faye Dunaway, John Horsley, Jonathan Stokes, Diana Rigg, Tom Chadbon, Geraldine James, Denis Lill, John Branwell, Jonathan Cake, Kelly Reilly, Anthony Bate, Ian McDiarmid, Timothy West, and Lucy Cohu
Release Date: April 13th, 1997
Rating: ★
To Buy

The gregarious Mrs. Van Hopper has hired herself a mousy little companion to accompany her to Monte Carlo. Yet she's put out that the old crowd aren't around and then laid up with a sniffle. Her young companion uses this time to become close to the one person in Monte Mrs. Van Hopper is fascinated with, Maxim de Winter, the inconsolable widow and owner of the great house Manderley. When Mrs. Van Hopper decides to decamp Maxim gives the little mouse a choice, go to New York with her employer or come to Manderley with him as his wife. It isn't a hard choice to embrace being the second Mrs. de Winter, a choice that even Mrs. Van Hopper approves, because at least someone bagged him. Back at his luxurious estate in England Maxim's young new wife feels that the shadow of his first wife, Rebecca looms large. But even despite the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and her doom and gloom, nothing can stop the newlyweds love for each other. That is unless Maxim is still in love with Rebecca... the discovery of Rebecca's scuttled boat in the bay will try their relationship, destroying everything or bringing them closer together.

The 1996-1997 season of Masterpiece Theatre was rare for me in that I caught it entirely. I was taking a year off before college and therefore had time to luxuriate in my much loved passions of reading and watching miniseries. The adaptation of Nostromo starring Colin Firth and A Royal Scandal starring Richard E. Grant were highlights that year. In fact when I recently learned A Royal Scandal was an extra on The Queen's Sister I instantly bought the DVD, despite my dislike of The Queen's Sister. Now if they'd just release Nostromo on anything other than VHS I'd be set because I'm seriously dying with only my old taped copy. But what I wasn't looking forward to was the season ending remake of Rebecca. This was at the height of my Hitchcock fanaticism, having taken film classes in high school and planning on taking more in college, and I couldn't comprehend why anyone would remake a classic.

Yes, Hitchcock didn't get it 100% right, but you can not deny that Laurence Olivier IS Maxim de Winter. It won best picture at the Oscars! So I planned to boycott the remake. The problem when living with your parents is that they have their own opinions on what they want to watch and seeing some of Rebecca turned out to be unavoidable. What little I saw made me instantly withdraw from the television room. My mom didn't last very long either, despite her love of Diana Rigg. For almost twenty years I have shunned this adaptation from those few glimpses. So I thought perhaps I should give it a second chance. Maybe Diana Rigg could be a superior Mrs. Danvers? Perhaps the beauty of Manderley would be done more justice in color with it's lush abundant floral growth? Or perhaps I should have trusted my gut reaction and avoided this piece of crap entirely.

What is striking about this adaptation is they have assembled some of the most talented actors in the British Isles and beyond and somehow sucked the life out of them. If it weren't for Faye Dunaway and Jonathan Cake I don't think a single line would have been uttered above a dull monotone. Rebecca is full of emotion and passion, both repressed and on full display, and yet here it comes across as the most flat and emotionless story ever. It should be turbulent and forceful like the sea, not fake and false like that shitty shack that was slapped together on the beach. After the first episode my dislike became more and more audible. Three hours and nothing went right. I was visibly cringing at all that they got wrong. The second Mrs. de Winter isn't just shy with a can do attitude but meek! Oh the rage! But even if I hadn't been comparing it to the book, it was awful. I kept making myself step back and think, if I hadn't read the book would I enjoy this? The answer was no time and time again.

While the heavy handed foreshadowing might have been driving me loopy, if Du Maurier was still alive I know what she'd hate most... they made this adaptation into a romance. Yes, there are romantic elements in Rebecca, but that is NOT what the book is. The moniker of "Romance Writer" hung around Du Maurier's neck like a millstone her entire life. To have her greatest novel reduced to being nothing more than a romance. No. She would have snapped. Plus, I like Charles Dance very much, don't get me wrong, his performance of himself in Jam and Jerusalem, Clatterford stateside, is one of my favorite cameos on TV ever; but to see him groping and pawing awkwardly at Emilia Fox's cheek and sucking her face so that it looks like he's eating her. Eww. The book STRONGLY hints that the de Winters had a sexless marriage and yet here the demonstrative affection is overwhelming. It's the exact opposite of the book, yet oddly passionless. And that lame excuse made for their lack of children? Like Maxim would run into a burning building to save Mrs. Danvers! NO!

Yet, I have to give props where props are due. These go to Diana Rigg and Jonathan Cake, Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell, Rebecca's blackmailing cousin, respectively. I think these two actually read the source material, which Arthur Hopcraft obviously didn't when adapting this because who would purposefully change the famous introductory chapter and slap it into an upbeat coda? But enough about Arthur Hopcraft because this obviously ended his career if you check out IMDB. As for Hitchcock he proves that even the greats can get it wrong and he just didn't get Mrs. Danvers, and went camp and over the top. Diana Rigg nails it. The sadness that is behind that stiff facade. As for Cake, I don't think I can pay him a higher compliment than saying I really thought he WAS Favell. Rigg and Cake got the menacing down perfectly. Yet they also had the depth Du Maurier demanded of these characters. While they had the menace, they also had the vulnerability, and ultimately the patheticness of these two and how hollow their last act, destroying Manderley, really is.

But in the end, seeing as this miniseries was called Rebecca, you'd think they'd at least get her right? Yet they didn't. It's almost as if Rebecca is an afterthought. She should be front and center, there, oppressing Maxim and his new wife every single second of their time at Manderley, but she's oddly not there. It's like Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell are the only ones who remember and it's only when they are around that Rebecca still lives. Otherwise it's as if she's long dead and long gone, not "haunting" them as should be the case. But this couldn't very well have been a romance if they concentrated on the Gothic nature of the book with Rebecca haunting Manderley now could it? As for when Rebecca actually appears... she's impressionistic and the camera is just too fucking close to her face. I wouldn't know it was Lucy Cohu, an actress I quite like, if it wasn't for the credits. Therefore we can say that like the book, there's a problem with Rebecca. Here it's her irrelevancy, there it's her possession of you body and soul. Let the book possess you and avoid this catastrophe. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Charles Dance, Colin Firth, Daphne Du Maurier, Diana Rigg, Du Maurier December Deux, Emilia Fox, Hitchcock, Jonathan Cake, Manderley, Masterpiece Theater, Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca, Richard E. Grant

The Great Mouse Detective
Based on the books by Eve Titus
Release Date: July 2nd, 1986
Starring: Barrie Ingham, Vincent Price, Val Bettin, Candy Candido, Alan Young, Frank Welker, Diana Chesney, Eve Brenner, Melissa Manchester, Barrie Ingham, Basil Rathbone, and Laurie Main
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Olivia Flaversham has a wonderful life, he father loves her dearly and is a talented toymaker. One night a peg-legged bat breaks into their toyshop and kidnaps her father. She determines to ask the greatest mouse detective ever, Basil of Baker Street, to find her father. Only poor Olivia is young and gets lost trying to find Baker Street, let alone trying to find Basil. Luckily for her Doctor Dawson has just returned from Afghanistan and finds the poor mite in an old boot. He hasn't heard of this Basil, but he does know where Baker Street is, so he offers to help the young mouse. When the duo meets the eccentric detective it looks as if their petty affair will not interest him until Olivia mentions the bat. The bat, Fidget, is the henchman of that most notorious of criminals, the Napoleon of Crime, Professor Ratigan! A rat with pretensions of being a mouse. But what could such a diabolical villain need with a mouse known for his clockwork creations? With the help of Sherlock Holmes's dog Toby they track down Fidget to yet another toyshop where he is looting it for uniforms and gears. Yet he is also supposed to kidnap Olivia, as extra incentive for her father's acquiescence. Their arrival at the toyshop gives the wily bat the opportunity to get the girl. Basil feels as if he has let down not just Olivia, but Dawson as well. Yet all is not lost! With his powers of deduction he will rescue Olivia and her father and put a stop to whatever plans Ratigan has! But what are Ratigan's plans? Could they be linked to that night's grand celebration, the diamond jubilee of their great Queen Victoria?

I have been reminded by my mother time and time again how hard it was for her with two small children in the eighties to take us to the movies. Not because we were ill-behaved, more on that later, but because the films we wanted to see were, oh, how can I put this nicely... shit? I don't think I will ever atone for The Care Bears Movie or My Little Pony: The Movie. My mother for years had been trying to interest us in more refined animated fare from Disney, apparently the mice in Cinderella were too much for me, and as for my brother and The Jungle Book, I never got to see the end of that film till I was in high school, and that movie had two theatrical viewing attempts made while younger. I was able to handle Peter Pan, my brother was purposefully left at home. But I'm pretty sure the success of Peter Pan was down to the fact that I knew I'd be in big trouble if I ruined my mom's favorite Disney film ever. Oddly enough all these films came out around 1986. Needless to say my mom was desperate for a movie that she could enjoy with us. That is where The Great Mouse Detective enters. I had since overcome my apparent animated mouse issues, seriously I don't remember them at all, and my mother was a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, so this movie seemed to be the perfect remedy, not just for us but for Disney. It quickly became a favorite with all of us and the perfect way to spend a hot summer afternoon after swimming lessons while simultaneously saving Disney's animation department that would go on to make some of my favorite films ever, from Aladdin to Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. Therefore The Great Mouse Detective holds a special place in my heart and was logically the first movie adaptation that I had to feature.

Until recently I had never read the book, Basil of Baker Street, on which this film was based. Going back to the movie after reading it's inspiration was a little jarring. The film creates more of a parallel world then a comedic homage to Holmes. In the book it's very amusing and self-deprecating with the way Basil sets out to be his hero, Sherlock Holmes. Whereas here the mice world is a reflection of the real world, with the mirroring not being humorous, just a fact of life. For every human there is a mouse counterpart, Holmes and Basil, Watson and Dawson, Queen Victoria and Queen Victoria. Excuse me? See, this is where my brain struggles with credulity. We have a Queen Victoria mouse who is celebrating her diamond jubilee... so, there's a mouse monarch who has reigned for sixty; yes that is SIXTY YEARS! A MOUSE! Who has lived a minimum of sixty years... yeah, not buying it. But more than this miraculously old mouse if they had actually wanted to stick with this parallel concept then they should have fully committed and made sure that none of the characters behaved against the type of their real world counterparts. For example, Holmes would NEVER actually accept any awards or honors. He is only in his line of work for the game. The solving of the unsolvable. He NEVER takes credit for any of his cases and to stoop to accept an honor? NEVER! If he were given a nice emerald tiepin in secret, that would be fine, but anything else, especially front page news would be unseemly! Plus Ratigan... his human counterpart Moriarty was a pillar of society, a man who studiously kept up his front of respectability in order to cover his crimes. To have Ratigan be instantly offensive to other mice, well, that didn't ring true.

As for Ratigan. The main draw for this film was that Ratigan was voiced by Vincent Price. I personally have issues with celebrities doing voices in animated films. By having a celebrity voice a character it takes you out of the story and makes it more about them. My favorite animated films are my favorites because they are one cohesive whole. I don't know who voices any of the characters in say Robin Hood and therefore that voice IS that character and therefore more believable. While I do really like newer films like Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon, I am forever distracted by knowing Po is Jack Black or Gobber is Craig Ferguson. Therefore The Great Mouse Detective to me is the beginning of a slippery slope that forever eliminated voice actors and made all films about the star attached. But getting down off my pulpit and getting back to Vincent Price, he at once seems perfectly cast and completely ill-suited. His voice is very distinctive, not one you'd necessarily associate with someone whose main career was in horror films. Yet he brings a refined menace to any character he portrayed. In The Great Mouse Detective the disconnect is in how they decided to portray Ratigan, as more thug like, versus the cultured Napoleon of crime he really was. You can't somehow connect the voice to the image. Much like Richard E. Grant in Corpse Bride, the image of the character is just SO WRONG to the image in your head and you can't reconcile the two. I keep wondering if Vincent had projected more, actually put some rage behind his lines if it would have worked. But it wouldn't, because that wasn't him. He had menace and mocking in the quietest of lines. Which is why his genius only comes out in the musical numbers. In the song "Goodbye So Soon" by Henry Mancini you see the heights to which this film could have reach had they tinkered with it a little more, but sadly they didn't.

But in the tradition of all movies from you childhood there has to be something to traumatize you for years to come. Like The Nothing in The Neverending Story, the pan of bloody oatmeal that made me not eat oatmeal for years in The Golden Child, Large Marge in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, the list could go on and on, this movie has it's own special horror. They might not have meant to traumatize me, but they did. Since I had gotten past my mouse phobia phase at this point, and Vincent Price was somewhat of an ill fit, I turned to Fidget, the evil bat with the broken wing and a peg leg. Now I didn't and don't have a problem with bats, unlike everyone else in my family. In fact, overall, I rather like Fidget. But there are one or two scenes that were, I think, specifically designed to terrify the audience, and in turn me. Whenever he bares his teeth and leans into the camera and his eyes go crazy red... I don't really like this at all. Yet there is one very specific scene that is very traumatic. When the gang leaves Baker Street on Toby's back and follows Fidget to the toyshop, that is when my nightmare begins. Not even taking into account the creepy dolls that are demented to such an extent that you will never want to see a porcelin doll with ringlets ever again, this scene is THE ONE. The one for nightmares. Fidget hides in a cradle and puts on a little bonnet and when Olivia looks in the cradle... there's something about, well, about everything in this scene that just gives me the wiggins. Bats in bonnets? NO THANK YOU! Fidget later repeats this gag by impersonating Olivia, but it's a far cry from this scene. I really am surprised I didn't develop a bat phobia from this...

One thing that struck me while rewatching this film so many years later is how Steampunk it is. Yes, I'm sure someone could find someway of justifying almost anything Victorian as being somehow Steampunk, but The Great Mouse Detective certainly is. Not just the overall look, or the epic Reichenbach moment in Big Ben with all the gears, but one aspect in particular. Hiram Flaversham and his clockwork creations. There's just something so Jules Verne about these creations. But taking it even further, the movie uses a true Steampunk trope, the mechanization of Queen Victoria. Usually she has done it to herself or someone has corrupted her and made her immortal, because obviously the Victorian era lasting forever is at the heart of Steampunk. Here it's Ratigan's plan to make a clockwork Queen Victoria that will be his puppet. So it's a little different than some of the takes, but I can't think of anything more Steampunk than a clockwork queen! Add to that the pomp and circumstance around the diamond jubilee, and seriously, why isn't everyone jumping on this Steampunk bandwagon. In fact, seeing as when this movie came out, I would say that author's like George Mann might have gotten their first taste of Victoriana here and it helped shape their sensibilities and therefore their work. Which brings me to an odd deduction I have never thought of before. While this film obviously helped shaped my sensibilities with regard to Sherlock Holmes and my love of all things British, is there a chance that this is what started the Steampunk germ in me? This is something I'll have to think about... in the meantime, goodbye so soon!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Basil of Baker Street, Dawson, Disney, Eve Titus, George Mann, Mice, Moriarty, Queen Victoria, Ratigan, Richard E. Grant, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlocked, Steampunk, The Great Mouse Detective, Toys, Vincent Price

Maurice
Based on the book by E.M. Forster
Starring: James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves, Denholm Elliott, Simon Callow, Billie Whitelaw, Barry Foster, Judy Parfitt, Phoebe Nicholls, Ben Kingsley, Patrick Godfrey, Mark Tandy, Kitty Aldridge, Helena Michell, Catherine Rabett, and Peter Eyre
Release Date: September 15th, 1987
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Despite a kindly teacher telling Maurice the facts of life before he ventured out into the "real world" he doesn't really believe that he will be like other men with a wife and a home. This thought of his prepubescent self seems to be prophetic as when he's at college at Cambridge he falls in love with his fellow student Clive Durham. They begin an affair of the heart, not of the body. They leave college and continue to be the center of each others lives. This happy situation can not last. A mutual friend, Risley, who has their predilections is caught in a sting operation and arrested and sentenced to six months hard labor for gross indecency. This incident shakes Clive's life to pieces. He and Maurice have been deluding themselves, and from now on they are to be nothing more than friends. Maurice doesn't want to accept this, but quite quickly he sees that Clive is moving on with his life. Clive is soon married and he and his wife Anne are settling into their country estate, Pendersleigh, and having friends round for the weekend and campaigning, living the life of a country squire. They finally convince Maurice to visit, and it will be a fateful one for Maurice. It is during this visit that he meets Alec Scudder, the under-gamekeeper of Pendersleigh. Despite Maurice trying to "cure" himself via hypnosis, Scudder, and his feelings for him, show Maurice that perhaps he doesn't want to change. Perhaps he has found what he had thought he had with Clive? Only this time is it real?

In college my friends and I used to all pile onto one couch in my parent's house and watch movies. They usually would be OK watching whatever film I had planned on viewing, and seeing as this was during the time when I tried to watch an entire actor's oeuvre, they'd sometimes be stuck watching Richard E. Grant for a summer, as we worked our way from Henry and June to Spice World. Ironically, of the two, I would recommend Spice World as the better film, I think Henry and June actually ended up in an impromptu trip to the liquor store in order to finish it. For some arcane and forgotten reason Maurice was watched on one of these nights. I really can not understand what possessed me to suggest it, this was at the height of my James Wilby hatred, seriously, until the Bertie and Elizabeth TV movie I really thought he was a dick cause he could only play them, plus I was also starting a period of hating Rupert Graves which was never fully broken till Sherlock. There are three conceivable reasons as to why we picked Maurice up at Video Station on that summer night, it was either because of Merchant and Ivory, or Hugh Grant, or because I was trying to find a period film that my friend Matt might be willing to watch. I should note that he did not watch it with us. All I remember of the film is that I was shocked we all remained awake through the whole film. Even the most exciting of films, which this is not, often resulted in nap time... hmm, maybe I should have connected letting me choose the film and nap time prior to now.... Needless to say, the film left almost no impression on me, yet I would gladly go back to that night we all watched it just to have one more night with us all piled on that couch never really thinking it would one day end.

If the movie had spent half as much time finding a properly fitting cast as it did fitting every single square inch of frame with Victorian and Edwardian tat then it would have been a flawless film. Instead it suffers from three bad casting decisions, James Wilby as Maurice, Rupert Graves as the laughable lower class Scudder, he can not pull off that accent in the least, and Ben Kingsley as, well, I'm not quite sure what he's supposed to be, maybe Texan? James Wilby is all wrong because he hadn't developed enough as an actor at this point and has no inherent charm like Hugh Grant. Instead we are left with a hero who is basically a cardboard cut out. At times he was so two-dimensional that I actually think having a cardboard cut out deliver the lines would have been more successful. To have the entire film rest on his shoulders is laughable. A strong force is needed for a title role, and by casting Wilby the movie failed before it started. But this was a failure that was forced on them because Julian Sands pulled out at the last minute. Could Julian Sands have made the film work? I can't tell you that... I can say that Wilby has made films I enjoy while Sands hasn't. As for Scudder... well, there it was just the fault of trying to force an accent one someone who was incapable of doing one. I have come to admire Rupert Graves over the years, but he is distinctly working middle class. The lower class accent combined with the bad grammar and language skills didn't work coming out of his mouth. In fact, they were laughable. But nothing will beat the fact that when Ben Kingsley showed up as the hypnotherapist and launched into his indescribable accent, the film, which was at a tipping point from art to farce until that moment, went straight to farce.

The worst part of the entire movie is the confluence of these three in a dream sequence that was obviously ripped off of Vertigo and threw out every bit of style and structure the film had thus far established. Previously the film is unique in that it lacked a score, any music in the film is classical pieces that usually were practical, a pianola, a gramophone, you get the idea. Yet the dream sequence is scored? That's an odd choice. And floridly scored like an untalented Edwardian Bernard Herrmann dropped by. Then the laying of images over each other with color flashes. This is getting more and more like Vertigo by the second. When Ben Kingsley's head started floating in the center of the screen, I was laughing so hard tears were streaming down my face. I just can't rectify this clash, to have a period film that is so distinctly staid and proper to have this stylistic French new wave interpretive dream makes NO SENSE! Much like in Vertigo, the dream is the crisis point of the movie, it's time for the lead to move forward with their life or forfeit it. But just because we have two characters in the grip of a life altering decision as focused through a fever dream doesn't mean that they should be so similar. Fifty years separate these stories, and that is a gulf that can not be breached. Even if Maurice had tried to incorporate the subconscious trying to tell the conscious self it's true desire, even if there had been some psychoanalysis going on, this was with out a doubt the number one way it should not have been handled.

But the film did handle some issues well, and the changes made aided the film and brought more clarity to the story than the book. The biggest change was how Clive's "conversion" was handled. In the book he just realizes as he's nursed back to health that he is no longer attracted to men. This is very flimsy reasoning. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, James Ivory's usual writing partner, had the inspired idea to actually give justification to this conversion through the underused character of Risley. In the book Risley is important for awakening Maurice's interests and inadvertently introducing him to Clive, and later for recommending the hypnotherapist. Instead we are shown a plausible and slightly hinted at story about what really happened to Risley when he was off stage. Risley is caught in a sting operation to entrap homosexuals, and despite being a Viscount, is sentenced to six months hard labor and may never hold a government position due to his proclivities and his arrest. This terrifies Clive into having cold sweats. Clive is also a well respected member of the aristocracy, he hopes to hold a position in government, and he has been living a double life for years. He has a crisis at a dinner at Maurice's house. Not brought on by his recent illness and the fear of telling Maurice they are through, but because he fears exposure and must give up the one thing that matters to him if he isn't to face the same fate as Risley. This, not only makes more sense, but gives Clive more depth. It shows that his sexual orientation isn't just a phase he was going through, but something that would always be a part of him that he pushed aside in order to survive. The last scene of the movie, with Clive and his wife, after Maurice has confronted Clive about being in love with Scudder, it shows a wistfulness, a longing that what Maurice and Scudder have, that is what he wants but is too scared to embrace.

In fact, much of the film is a refocusing of the narrative on Clive. While this honing in does the story the disservice of sidelining Maurice's family, the truth is their hatred of Maurice doesn't serve the narrative if you are actually trying to make him likable. But the fact is if this film had sidelined Maurice just like it did his family, it could have been a better film. By adding more depth to Clive, seeing the whole story through his eyes becomes far more fascinating then just following around the unsympathetic and flat Maurice. One thing I found interesting though is the film really focused in on Clive as being asexual. He loves men, but never physically. He NEVER acts on his impulses. As we see later with his wife, they too have a very chaste relationship, almost like siblings. The book doesn't go to great lengths to stress the fact that Clive and Maurice's love is unconsummated, and in fact, if it wasn't for Forster's insistence that their love had no physical side in the afterward, I would argue that they did have a physical relationship. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Forster added that afterward to try to make the book more palatable by insisting that it was only Scudder and Maurice getting it on, and that Clive was above reproach, aside from that "phase" he went through prior to Greece, but he never acted on his impulses. Again, I think that this gives Clive more depth. You see him not as someone who had two loves in his life and is now content. Instead he is a man always thwarted by his desires he is trying to repress. It makes him a tragic figure. In the book Clive is just the awakening and Scudder is the prize. Clive being perfectly content in his post Maurice life. This little tweak changes that all. It adds more to the story and with Hugh Grant's portrayal of Clive we are given the one and only redeeming facet of the film.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Asexual, Ben Kinsgley, Bernard Herrmann, E.M. Forster, Forster Fall, Henry and June, Homosexuality, Hugh Grant, James Wilby, Maurice, Richard E. Grant, Risley, Rupert Graves, Sherlock Holmes, Spice Girls, Vertigo