however, he has recreated that period in pre-World War I England and endowed the platonic passion between two upper-class Englishmen with singular grace in Maurice." Michael Blowen in The Boston Globe commented: "The team of producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory has created another classy film of a classic novel with their stunning adaptation of E. M. Forster's Maurice." Reception in the UK was different, with The Times questioning whether "so defiant a salute to homosexual passion should really be welcomed during a spiraling AIDS crisis". James Ivory has attributed the negative reviews to the reviewers being homosexual themselves, stating: Legacy Maurice has won abundant praise in the 30 years since its initial release, both for the quality of the film and the audacity with which it depicted a gay love story at the height of the 1980s AIDS crisis. According to the Los Angeles Times, the fact that: The New Yorker, in a retrospective on the film in 2017, stated, "...For many gay men coming of age in the eighties and nineties, 'Maurice' was revelatory: a first glimpse, onscreen or anywhere, of what love between men could look like". Director James Ivory said, "So many people have come up to me since 'Maurice' and pulled me aside and said, 'I just want you to know you changed my life.'" The Guardian, describing Maurice as "undervalued in 1987 and underseen in 2017", lamented the relatively poor reception of the film compared to its lauded predecessor A Room with a View, saying it was "...filed away as, if not a disappointment, a lesser diversion" because it was "put bluntly, too gay". LA Weekly likewise called Maurice "the Merchant-Ivory film the World Missed", stating that: "it seems like it’s only recently been celebrated for how groundbreaking it was, and for its importance in the development of gay cinema." In May 2017, a 4K restoration of Maurice was given a limited release in the United States to celebrate the film's 30th anniversary. In March 2018, the restored version was screened in London as part of the BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, with introductions by James Wilby and Hugh Grant. Home media In 2002, a special-edition DVD of the film was released with a new documentary and deleted scenes with director's commentary. It was released on Blu-ray in September 2017 by the Cohen Media Group. Awards Venice Film Festival 1987 Won, Best