Harold and Maude (1971, Hal Ashby)


"Harold and Maude" manages to take seemingly opposite elements – death and love, black humour and a Cat Stevens soundtrack -- and combines them all to tell a fascinating, timeless story that had me questioning my own ideas of love.

The film starts out with Harold (Bud Cort), a somber, round-eyed, well-dressed and wealthy 20-year-old who lives with his mother, staging his own suicide.

In eerie ritualism he puts on a Cat Stevens record, lights candles, prepares the noose, and times his fall to correspond with his mother’s entrance into the room.

“I suppose this is your idea of a joke, Harold?” his mother says, unfazed by the fact that her son is swinging from a noose, and obviously accustomed to such behaviour.

From there we get an idea of Harold’s fascination with the macabre, as he fakes his own death numerous times, all for the benefit of his socialite mother – or perhaps for his own benefit, as he seems to get pleasure from trying to upset her.

In one grim scene, Harold floats face down in the pool, by all appearances dead, while his mother casually swims lengths a couple of metres away.

He’s a strange, depressed young man who seems to have little to lose when he meets Maude, through their shared pastime of attending the funerals of people they don’t know.

Though almost 80, Maude (Ruth Gordon; Rosemary’s Baby) breathes new life into Harold, taking him on adventures such as rescuing a tree in the city and replanting it in the forest – essentially defying the rules of society and showing Harold how great it can be to be alive.

In one touching scene, while they sit on a rug smoking a sheesha pipe in Maude’s converted railway-car home, Harold explains how he became obsessed with death after causing a massive explosion in the science lab at boarding school.

He ran away and returned home, convinced his academic career was over, then watched secretly while his usually cold and detached mother was informed of his death by two policemen.

“She put a hand to her forehead, and with the other she reached out as if groping for support, and with this long sigh she collapsed in their arms,” he explains, moments before breaking down in tears.

“I decided then that I enjoyed being dead.”

Maude’s response serves as a perfect description of her character, and seems to represent a turning point in Harold’s life.

“A lot of people enjoy being dead,” she tells him gently. “But they’re not dead really. They’re just backing away from life. Reach out! Take a chance! Get hurt even. Play as well as you can. Give me an L, give me an I, give me a V, give me an E. L-I-V-E, live! Otherwise you’ve got nothing to talk about in the locker room.”

Harold and Maude, though separated by generations, are soulmates and their friendship turns to love as they find common ground through their apparently opposite infatuations with death and life.

While sitting by the ocean, Harold gives Maude a gift, inscribed with the words ‘Harold loves Maude.’

“And Maude loves Harold,” she replies, before throwing it into the water.

“So I’ll always know where it is,” she says, her explanation serving as a touching reminder that the evidence of true love lies in the heart, not in things.

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