Harold and Maude Movie Review

This review will contain some spoilers. I will discuss events and ideas from the movie and present my opinion on the film. Nevertheless, you should watch this film for yourself, and see whether you agree with me.

The Players

Harold and Maude is a romantic comedy drama directed by Hal Ashby (Being There, In the Heat of the Night), starring Bud Cort (MAS*H), Ruth Gordon (Rosemary's Baby) and Vivian Pickles.

The Plot

The movie centers on Harold. A young loner obsessed with death, particularly his own, who indulges in staging fake suicides and attending funerals when he's not in therapy. Maude however is pushing eighty when they meet, and is breezy to say the least. She lives in a modest railroad home littered with items she's gathered over the years and spends her days saving dying trees, attending funerals and driving whatever car takes her fancy.

There meet-cute happens at the funeral of an eighty year old man, which Maude claims is a great age to die. The two eventually strike up a relationship, and what follows is less of a romance than a coming of age. Harold's Mother, sick of his antics, feels it's time to marry. One girl watches him burn to death, the other sees him hack his own arm off with a meat cleaver. You get the picture. It has been said that Harold in this way tortures his mother. I feel she tortures him. Does he do it out of hatred? make your own mind up. I feel he does it to get a reaction, otherwise she wouldn't say a word to him, or maybe he wants to fantasize about the only state in which his mother could no longer control his life. Either way, Harold has a problem in his life, and it's Maude who has all the lessons. The cut from the field of flowers to the field of gravestones marks a great lesson. You must live as the unique individual you are now, for in death, we are all the same.

The relationship with Maude plays out more like a coming of age one than a romance, and through it Harold learns what he needs to learn. The film is controversial in this aspect however. Much has been written about the ending of this film, I won't ruin it, claiming that it is instead a pro death story disguised as a pro life story. Viewers may well feel the same, but the effect wouldn't be the same without it. Had 'it' not happened, Harold wouldn't have learned what he needed to. He must take back control of his life from his controlling Mother and live his life how he chooses. Some way into this film, when they happen across a dying tree, Maude says "we have to do something about this life". That's exactly what she sees in Harold. The boy is growing cold, flirting dangerously with the idea of suicide, so she must do something. Her passion is contagious and inspiring, and I won't ruin her backstory. It reminds us all to take control of our lives, and to not be in love with the cages we or society make for ourselves. In the end, Harold plays one last prank, this time on us. I feel most critics missed the message here. The car his mother bought him, when she took issue with his beloved hearse, is a symbol of his mothers domineering nature, feeling that money and materialistic things make a good upbringing. In destroying the car, he breaks free of the cage she has set for him, breaks free of the idea of suicide and discovers that only human connection is valuable, everything else are just things.

My rating: 10/10 stars.

If you agree or disagree, please comment your opinions, I would love to know how you felt.