Bedtime Movies

Finally took the time to review some of the DVDs I have stacked up on my desk. It's been a while since I've taken a break long enough to catch up on my gay movie viewing - and the titles have certainly piled up since then. There were the usual depressing tragedies of course - meaning boy meets, boy falls in love with boy, boy undergoes trials and tribulations to finally end up with boy, boy dies of some unforeseen malady, a disastrous, ill-contrived accident... etc. There were also the flesh-baring porn scenes masquerading as a moving drama with an intricate plot - but hell, we all enjoy that, don't we?



Of course that wasn't the way all the movies ended. One movie that caught my attention was Merchant Ivory's Maurice. Really ancient, I'm sure to some of the other purveyors of gay cinema out there but it's new to me. Sure, I read the book written by E. M. Forster a while ago but I never really got to watch the movie till now. Hell, the DVD's been sitting on my desk for months.

What surprised me was the fact that I enjoyed the movie - isn't it the well known adage that a real-life movie never comes to life as perfectly as the imagined movie in your head? But I like Maurice. For those not in the know, Maurice tells the tale of an intelligent, sensitive Englishman in the beginning of the last century, wrestling with his sexual identity. A role wonderfully played by a fresh, almost innocent looking James Wilby. Ever since I first read the book, I've always tried to imagine the image of Scudder ( played by a belligerent Rupert Graves ) coming into Maurice's bedroom... and I don't think it has ever come out as well.

A movie made from a book inspired by a touch on the buttocks. Isn't life swell?