"Harold and Maude" is a delightful, funny, moving, off-beat black comedy with a lot of heart. It is also one of the best and unusual on-screen romances I've seen. If the opposites attract each other, there have not been perhaps more different in every possible way screen couple than 20 years old Harold (Bud Cort) and Maude(charming, clever, multi-talented Ruth Gordon, the Oscar winning actress and three times Oscar nominee for writing) who is just about to turn 80. Harold is a rich kid who is obsessed with death and likes to stage very believable and hilarious succession of suicide attempts to impress his unflappable socialite mother who got used to them and not impressed anymore. Harold's others hobbies are driving the hearse and to attend funerals where he meets one day a woman who will change his life forever, 79 years young free-spirit, rebel, and fighter for "Liberty. Rights. Justice", Maude. She also likes to attend the funerals of the strangers. We won't learn much about Maude's life story but there will be one visual flash which gives us a very good idea that Maude knew a lot about death, losses, and suffering but she chose to celebrate, worship, and enjoy life to the fullest. This short poignant moment is a stroke of genius, and there are many of them in the truly unique, one of its kind movie. Maybe Hal Ashby had brought some of memories from his own childhood that included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide, his dropping out of high school, getting married and divorced all before he was 19, into "Harold and Maude". Hal Ashby had made a series of memorable, intelligent, well acted films in the 70s, that included The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978) and Being There (1979) but it is "Harold and Maude" that has become the cult classic from the first days of its release and it more than deserves its status. The movie also benefits tremendously from the soundtrack of songs by Cat Stevens.
Review of Harold and Maude
