Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude (1971). Director: Hal Ashby

I know that some movies are not made to please the audience, but I don’t know how many movies dare to challenge the viewers the way Harold and Maude does. This 1971 movie uses acute dualities as building blocks to create a story that is both intriguing and unsettling. The male protagonist, Harold, is a young man fascinated by the idea of death; he performs fake suicides and has a hobby of attending funerals. In a stagnant life controlled by his self-centered mother, observing and “practicing” death perhaps gives Harold a taste of freedom, a morbid pleasure in his boring life. Harold becomes friends with a 79-old woman, Maude. Maude is a free spirit who believes living life to its fullest and in doing so often disregards the rules and regulations of the society. The two main characters represent the very first contrast of this movie: the young is an admirer of death, and the old an admirer of life. From this first contrast, there unfurls a story that defies convention in almost every possible way.

The connection between Harold and Maude are so strong that they eventually develop a romantic (and nonplatonic) relationship. The relationship between Harold and Maude daringly upholds the idea that nothing other than the connection between two human being matters, and it challenges the convention through celebrating this “unhealthy” coupling. It even mocks such conventional thought by having a priest express his disgust toward the relationship between Harold and Maude in a comically exaggerated way. Looking at Harold, I wonder if the director deliberately makes him look almost underage to sharpen the contrast between him and Maude. Regardless, even though it only makes sense that Harold and Maude fall in love, as a viewer I do feel uncomfortable when the story progresses as such, and I admire the filmmaker for challenge the audience this way. The story takes a sharp turn soon afterwards on Maude’s 80 birthday, when she tells Harold at the birthday party he prepares for her that she has decided to end her life at the age of 80. Maude dies, and Harold performs one last fake suicide acts by driving his car off a cliff. The movie ends with Harold walking lightheartedly away from the top of the cliff and playing on his banjo a song that sums up Maude’s philosophy of life: “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out.”

Another sharp contrast is not in the story itself, but in the storytelling. This movie is a mixture of dark comedy and heart-felt drama, and the way the two elements are combined is far from smooth. I wonder if such rough mixture is intentional, because the resulting tonal inconsistency is very visible. The first half of the movie, before the dramatic element starts to kick in, is almost too quirky to my taste. Without the knowledge of Maude’s backstory (of which not much is said), it is very difficult to make sense of and therefore like her seemingly eccentric and self-centered behavior. However, once the dramatic component starts, facilitated by excellent performances from the two actors, the film soon takes flight and everything falls into place. Released in 1971, this movie is perhaps a representation of the Hippie movement, as there are several subplots that clearly have anti-government or anti-war feel to them. 

All in all, the story of Harold and Maude is one of rebellion, where Harold rebels against life by being drawn to death, and Maude rebels against everything deterministic by living (and ending) life solely at her own will. It might also be a rebellion of the filmmaker against conventional story, storytelling and conventional viewing experience.