Title: Harold and Maude
Rating: 5 Stars
I’ve been reading a book that contained a chapter that, among other things, discussed the director Hal Ashby. In the 1970s, Ashby had a crazy run of exceptional films, including such classics as Shampoo, The Last Detail, Coming Home, and Being There. His first film from the 1970s was the 1971 Harold and Maude. Until I read this chapter, I had no idea that he’d directed it. I’ve never seen it, but having enjoyed his later work from the 70s, I decided to give it a try.
Like a lot of people, I had the very general idea that it was about a young man becoming romantically involved with a much older woman. Beyond that, I really had no idea what to expect.
The film stars Bud Cort as Harold and Ruth Gordon as Maude. Harold is apparently in his early 20s, although to be honest, in his first scenes he appears to be about 15. Raised with great wealth, it’s fair to say that Harold feels nothing but ennui. There is nothing exciting about his life. The one recent highlight was when he got in a seemingly serious accident and he was able to watch his mom react to his supposed death. Seeing her experience, for once, true emotion, changed Harold for the worse.
He’s now obsessed with death. He goes to random funerals. He stages mock suicide attempts for his mom to stumble upon. He drives around in a hearse.
His mom is fed up. She doesn’t even react now to his mock suicide attempts. She attempts to goad him into action by setting him up with a dating service. That goes disastrously as he stages suicide attempts at every first meeting of a prospect.
At a couple of funerals that he attends, Harold notices an older lady. Eventually, the lady beckons him over and they begin to talk. As opposed to the stolidity of Harold, Maude is full of life. She steals cars. She drives crazily. She’s an artist, a musician, and an inventor. She flouts all authority.
As Harold and Maude become closer, Harold begins to open up. He realizes that there is more to life than waiting for death. He begins to participate in Maude’s shenanigans. They confess their love to each other. To his mom’s shock, he announces that he intends to wed Maude.
Why did I give it 5 stars? This might have been a consequence of low expectations, but I found the film to be really quite funny. In many places, the comedy is quite dark. Harold’s mock suicides are hilarious. He hangs himself, slits his wrists, sets himself on fire, chops off his arm, and commits ritualistic Hari-Kari. In all of these attempts, his mom just rolls her eyes in a blase manner. When he attempts Hari-Kari, he does so in front of one of his potential dates. Instead of being horrified like the other woman, this one, an actress, gets into it and proceeds to do, much to Harold’s disgust, Juliet’s death scene.
It wasn’t all dark comedy. Maude’s persistent tweaking of figures in authority, be they priests or any of several police officers, is quite fun.
The sound track is interesting as well. Instead of getting a composer, Ashby used Cat Stevens. At random moments in the film where there wasn’t any dialog, a semi-relevant Cat Stevens song would start playing. It reminded me of The Graduate, where a similar thing would happen with Simon and Garfunkel songs. It reinforced that, during this time of the late 1960 / early 1970s, film makers were trying to create synergies between the youth movements of music and of cinema.
Ruth Gordon’s career is pretty interesting. She was in some early silents way back in 1915. She then went to Broadway before starting to appear in films again in the 1940s. Now, here she is, in 1971, in a starring role at the age of 75, over fifty years since she made her debut.
Bud Cort, aged 23 in 1971, was apparently a very serious method actor. The story is that he went up to Ashby and suggested that, since he was a method actor, he should have sex with Ruth Gordon to truly live the role. Ashby’s response was that he didn’t want to know anything about it.
Although the term is not used any more, at one point there was kind of a meme about regarding the manic pixie dream girl. The plot was generally about some stolid white guy somewhat morosely going about his life with no purpose. A woman, full of dream and whimsy, happens into his life, and through her sheer exuberance, manages to bring about a sea change in the man and leads him to happiness. Usually (or really, always) this is a young woman. Think about Kate Winslet’s character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State. Sandra Bullock does a turn in Forces of Nature. You can even reach further back to Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. His character just wants to go back to jail until he meets a lively young woman that flouts all authority. In the title cards, she’s identified by the word gamin. According to Wikipedia, gamin means ‘slim, often boyish, elegant young woman who is, or is perceived to be, mischievous, teasing or sexually appealing’. That just about sums it up. Given Chaplin’s, um, proclivities for young women, you can see how this is a somewhat problematic meme.
Here you have the same archetype, but instead of a young woman, you have a much older woman that has lived a full life (even a life of significant tragedy if the tattoo of numbers on her arm are any indication) and is full of hard acquired wisdom. She has so much more to offer than just the fresh sex appeal of youth.
The generational torch of joie de vivre is passed in a loving, funny way. At the end of the film, Harold performs one final mock suicide attempt and then walks off, ready to live his life.
dorkenstein 