A commercial failure when it was released in 1971, Harold and Maude is in my opinion a fantastic inspiring movie that manages to do romance with out the cheese.
It’s not a particularly compelling idea not to me, anyhow a 20-year-old man falls in love with an 80-year-old woman. Your natural instinct is one of distaste as you imagine, like the priest in the film says, ‘the fact of [his] young, firm body commingling with the withered flesh, sagging breasts, and flabby buttocks makes me want to vomit’.
If the movie was simply about Harold, the 20-year-old, it would be dull. He’s from a rich, rich, rich family, and his family’s fortune allows him to do nothing except plan fake suicides.
The entrance of Maude into the film makes it complete. Just as Harold is obsessed with death, Maude is enraptured with life. Her view of the world is summarized neatly in one of the film’s more memorable quotes:
“Dreyfus once wrote that on Devil’s Island he would see the most glorious birds. Many years later in Britanny he realized they had only been sea gulls.
To me they will always be glorious birds.”
As Harold and Maude grow attached together, you lose all sense of their ages. Maude doesn’t act 80, and neither does Harold seem to be 20 instead, they feed off each other and it feels fitting that they fall in love.
Beyond the plot of their romance, the film speaks out against war and materialism, and though the humour is grim, it’s laughable. Harold pretends to cut off his arm in one scene I laughed out loud. Harold’s uncle, a war-vet, salutes a picture of a memory I snickered.
Back in the 70s, critics were divided over the film, with some being quite critical and some comparing it as the ‘cinematic equivalent to Le Petit Prince’. This film has achieved cult status now and now more than ever, the anti war sentiments hold true, and as we endlessly consume diapers and iPods, the anti-materialism is especially vital. In fact, the age of the film is intricately compelling… back in 1971, cars were Detroit steel, no one had cell phones and the streets were oddly bereft of modern technology. It’s a little awe-inspiring.
Harold and Maude is one of those movies that’s easiest to ignore. After all, it’s sandwiched between Harold and Kumar go to White Castle and Harry Potter. You’ll tell yourself ‘I’ll get it next time, but right now, I’m in the mood for another predictable comedy, preferably with toilet humour and someone black having cultural misunderstandings with a rich, white person’.
You could do that. But Harold and Maude steal a police motorcycle, and I think that’ll be good enough.
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