Heretic: Hugh Grant Terrorizes Mormons

It is hard enough serving as a Mormon missionary in liberal Boulder, Colorado. Trey Parker and Matt Stone did not do them any favors with Book of Mormon either. However, they are in for a truly harrowing ordeal when they are invited into the home of a cultural relativist with a nefarious interest in comparative religions. Prepare yourself to root for the Mormons in director-screenwriters Scott Beck & Bryan Woods’ Heretic, which opens Friday in theaters.

Supposedly, Mr. Reed’s wife is in the kitchen baking a blueberry pie. That is why they allow him to lure them into his house. Otherwise, being alone with a man would have been against the LDS rules for missionaries. It turns out the Church has good reason for these rules. It is snowing outside, but the girls are smart enough to recognize when it is time to retreat. Unfortunately, Reed keeps his home inescapably secured with Rube Goldbergian time locks.

Against their will and better judgment, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton sit through Reed’s Michel Foucault-ish lectures regarding the commonalities present in most monotheistic religions. Their lives are clearly in physical peril, but Reed also hopes to endanger their faith. However, Sister Paxton, the more assertive and worldly of the two girls, realizes the more they challenge Reed’s arguments, the more their odds for survival improve. He will show them some shocking sights designed to shake their faith, but they are more resilient than he assumes.

Fans of the A24 brand of horror might be taken aback by many aspects of Heretic. For starters, the nonbelieving not-so-humanist is an absolute, undeniable monster. As screenwriters, Beck & Woods have their criticisms of Mormonism, but they are keenly sympathetic towards the two Sisters. In fact, they show that many of the lazy cheap shots lobbed at Mormons are exactly that: lazy cheap shots.

Although co-stars Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East are no longer practicing Mormons, they both grew up in the LDS Church and still maintain personal ties, so they keenly understood the missionary experience. They were also not inclined to trash the Church. That kind of sympathy and authenticity really comes through in their gripping performances as Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton. There is nothing cartoonish about their portrayals. Right from the start, we believe they are young women already somewhat stepping out of their previously sheltered existences, facing someone sinister and manipulative, well beyond their experiences.

Merchant Ivory’s Maurice

Even though E.M. Forster’s twice-revised posthumous novel of the love that dare not speak its name was not published until after his death, a non-canonical ending still circulates in some editions. On the advice of a few trusted friends, Forster discarded a years-after-the-fact postscript—and so did the characteristically classy Merchant Ivory adaptation. In honor of its thirtieth anniversary, a pristine 4K restoration of James Ivory’s Maurice (trailer here) returns to theaters in New York this Friday.

Maurice (pronounced “Morris”) Hall is a middle-class striver, whereas Clive Durham is to the manor born, but when they meet at Cambridge, their mutual attraction is undeniable. Unfortunately, in early 1910s England, it is also illegal. Ironically, it is Durham who makes the first move. Although initially shocked, Hall quickly becomes much more accepting of their orientation and maybe a bit more reckless than Durham would prefer.

Soon after leaving Cambridge, Durham breaks off their romantic relationship, spooked by the public disgrace of a former classmate. The two men maintain an ostensibly platonic friendship, but their secret past is always hovering over their heads. Yet, it is during Hall’s awkward visits to Durham’s estate that he meets a certain under-gamekeeper by the name of Scudder. (Gamekeepers just seem to get a lot of action in English literature, don’t they?)

Frankly, A Room with a View is probably the best Marchant-Ivory Forster adaptation, but Maurice is still a finely crafted period production. Unlike agonizingly reserved M-I films such as the masterful Remains of the Day (the full greatness of which is still not sufficiently recognized, despite its eight Oscar nominations), Maurice has a slight tendency towards the melodramatic. However, it is at its best when depicting the complicated way Hall’s strained relationship with Durham continues to evolve.

In all fairness, Hugh Grant is excellent in the role of Durham, but it is uncomfortably meta watching him fret over a possible scandal in light of the actor’s own well publicized vice bust. In contrast, James Wilby’s Hall is a bit Jekyll-and-Hyde-like, whipsawing back and forth between painful sincerity and brusque aloofness (A Handful of Dust from the following year probably still represents his best work). Rupert Graves is almost unrecognizable, but impressively intense as the rough, passionate Scudder. Yet, it is the crafty veterans Simon Callow, Barry Foster, Denholm Elliott, and Sir Ben Kingsley who consistently steal the show with small but colorful (and critically important) supporting turns.

Partly shot on location at King’s College, Maurice is a handsome film that captures the stateliness and stifling conformity of the characters’ privileged milieu. It certainly looks like a Merchant Ivory film, which is always a good thing. Respectfully recommended for fans of the sort of literate British historical dramas James Ivory perfected with his longtime producing partner Ismail Merchant, Maurice opens this Friday (5/19) in New York, at the Quad Cinema.