Comparing the wonderful film Maurice to Brokeback Mountain

Rating: Null/10 (25 January 2006)

Has anybody noticed that the film Maurice (198 by James Ivory) and Brokeback Mountain have basically the same theme? Clive is the Ennis character, and Maurice is the more daring Jack. Although Maurice (the film) concentrates more on Maurice (the person), Brokeback concentrates more on the Clive kind of figure in Ennis. Both Ennis and Clive (played by Hugh Grant!)are too afraid of breaking convention to really allow themselves to imagine living with the person they love. Both basically refuse the other. The coldness of Ennis for his wife is mirrored in Clive's for HIS wife. And so on. I personally think that despite all the hype about Brokeback, Maurice is really the better film. In fact, Ang Lee is as reticent in his film style as Ennis is in his life. Ang Lee (sort of) shows us sex, shows them hugging a lot...but the scene in college between Maurice and Clive where Maurice is slowly stroking Clive's hair and Clive slowly becomes aroused is far hotter and more sensual than anything in Brokeback. And the scene of Maurice and Clive in the hotel is more realistic and even includes (tasteful) full frontal nudity. Maurice was a big budget film that dared (in 1987) far more than Ang Lee does in 2005... Perhaps Ang Lee was afraid of scaring away the heterosexual males, but Maurice seems to have done all right at thebox office anyway. It was nominated for an Academy Award, and won Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival (where Brokeback won for Best Film).
Watch the scene where Clive declares his love for Maurice and Maurice is shocked. There is more in the one look that Maurice gives Clive than in half of what Brokeback expresses. We never really get to understand in Brokeback how horrified Ennis or Jack might have felt about their feelings for each other. They seem more afraid of what OTHERS think rather than what they feel themselves. But that one extraordinary look of horror by Maurice when Clive says "I love you" shows that Maurice has to come to grips with himself before he can begin to come to grips with the prejudices of the society around him. Ennis was afraid to let himself go, but I never got the sense that he was disgusted with his desire for Jack. And that is why I think Maurice is more interesting. The character of Maurice develops continually, adapting to the challenges presented, even if Clive doesn't. In Brokeback, in fact, nobody seems to move forward at all over 20 years of existence. Hard to believe, especially since much of it takes place after Stonewall, when the gay liberation movement was in full swing. But above all, I think Maurice is the better film because I believe the desire between Maurice and Clive, and later between Maurice and Scudder, to be more realistically portrayed than what I saw between Ennis and Jack in Brokeback. This does not surprise me, because, after all, Maurice is a gay film made by a gay director, whereas Ang Lee is straight. It seems normal to me that James Ivory was able to make Maurice more sensual and erotic, all the while being just as "controlled" as Ang Lee, simply because he, as a gay man, was more tuned in to gay eroticism... Anybody else out there agree with me that Maurice is the better film?