Maurice and Social Traditions

In deciding whether to watch A Passage to India or Maurice, I consulted the ever-trustworthy rottentomatoes.com and, upon seeing Maurice with a higher "tomatometer" rating, a 91% even, took it with a bit of pasta one evening.
If something were to ruin the movie, anything at all, Hugh Grant no doubt would save it. His performance, I thought, carried the movie, all the way through Edwardian sitting rooms, Edwardian sitting rooms, and, well, Edwardian sitting rooms. The look at Cambridge made me pain a bit to then look at our dwellings on campus. And further, I wish we too were under the pressures of established, collegiate decencies - I think.
Yes, the film pulled homosexual strings but, I thought, in the contrast between Maurice and Clive, did so quite properly. In Clive was presented a tendency toward homosexuality - a just-past-platonic tendency toward homosexuality - then tempered, in his later years, by society. And when he regarded duty to society, duty to its traditions and decencies, over what might to him have offered a more fleeting and thrilling lifestyle, he found contentment in it and in his eventual marriage. Maurice, on the other hand, sparked first by Clive's affection, continued on a spiraling descent into carnality, separating him from his family, society, and, by the end of things, his first collegiate friend and, well, love - Clive. And here was the strength of the movie, apart from its portrayal of Cambridge - duty before pleasure, and if one is to conquer the other, then let duty do the conquering.