Viking Night: Harold and Maude
By Bruce Hall
July 7, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
At some point we all love, hate, laugh, cry, and long for meaning, right? That's why we have art, and for some of us, art is a conduit for getting in touch with our humanity. And the great thing about film as an art form is the way it appeals to our sense of nuance. So, it's a good thing Harold and Maude is done well. An offbeat romance between two people 60 years apart needs all the nuance it can get.
Sadly though, it's not about Hugh Hefner’s ascension to the Dirty Old Man Hall of Fame. It’s about 20-year-old Harold Chasen (Bud Cort), who may well be cinema’s very first Goth Kid. Harold lives in a massive, depressing mansion with his imperious, emotionally aloof mother. The film isn’t clear on what happened to Harold’s father (I assume he chose the sweet release of death over marriage), but his mother appears to be a wealthy widower, more interested in hobnobbing with society’s upper crust than developing her relationship with her son. Thanks to this, Harold spends most of his time toodling around their cavernous home, finding increasingly elaborate ways to fake his own death.
In fact, the movie opens with Harold apparently hanging himself as his mother bursts into the room - not to help, but to make a phone call, setting up whatever super-rich person activities she has planned for the night. Her dispassionate reaction suggests she’s used to this, and for me it’s one of the most interesting parts of the movie. Here’s a wealthy widow with nothing but time to spend with her son, who instead emotionally alienates him to the point where he feels it necessary to splash fake blood all over the bathroom to win any sign at all of her affection.
Her response is to send him to a daffy head shrink, marry him off, or recruit him into the Army. At dinner, she consistently speaks about him in the third person as though he’s an old car that won’t quite run right but has just enough sentimental value to keep around. Speaking of old cars, Harold’s hobbies include driving a hearse to funerals and watching complete strangers weep over their dearly departed. Combine that with Bud Cort’s ghostly pallor and wide eyed disillusionment, and this might be the world’s first Goth comedy. Harold’s repeated attempts at fake suicide are played for laughs - dry laughs - and his mother’s bullheaded insistence on not responding to it is equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.
One of my favorite scenes is the one where Harold’s mother signs him up for a computer dating service (which was apparently a thing in 1971), virtually ignoring his presence as she fills out the questionnaire with her own preferences. Meanwhile, her son calmly and deliberately shoots himself in the head with a prop gun. Yeah, that’s what you do with someone who’s savagely depressed - you force your will on them. It’s a high-level view of their relationship, and it makes me a little sad that dear mother doesn’t see what a bright future her child has in the movie special effects or Las Vegas based magician industries.
But this is far from a morbid movie. Harold may be eccentric, but he’s got nothing on Maude, a sweet-looking little old lady he begins spotting at the funerals he attends. She sits apart from the other mourners, making no effort to hide her spectator status, and she tends to dress and act somewhat inappropriately, considering the death-related theme you find at most funerals. Sensing a kindred spirit, Maude reaches out to Harold by stealing his car and inviting him over for tea. Maude lives in a converted rail car that looks like a cross between...well...a converted railcar and a Gypsy pawn shop. Maude is a spry one, well along in years but with the spirit of a teenager.
Maude is acutely interested in everything, and approaches life with the ardent interest of a child. She has a unique (and sometimes highly dangerous) appreciation and perspective on nearly everything, the likes of which Harold has never experienced. She encourages him to revel in every aspect of life - sight, sound, taste, smell, thrills and even the mundane, quiet poetry of a field of daisies. He smiles for the first time in the movie while he’s around her, and it’s a clearly deliberate moment that changes the course of the story.
The change in Harold goes unnoticed by his mother, who continues to parade him before a steady stream of eligible bachelorettes - whom he quickly dispatches by faking suicide on the first date. In fact, when Mother attempts to replace Harold’s hearse with a Jaguar sports coupe, he simply transforms it into the world’s most Fast and Furious little hearse. This is one of many scenes you’ll want to watch twice, and I feel for the very few people who sat through this movie in theaters four decades ago. Pause, rewind and replay come in super handy several times over the course of this film. It’s not only worth multiple views, but it’s worth taking your time each time you watch it.
Harold and Maude is full of quirky, oddball characters worthy of a Monty Python sketch, and it seems to take place in a universe that looks like ours, but where the laws of action and consequence are applied selectively. The script, by Colin Higgins (9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) is wry, fast-paced and full of laughs where you least expect them. Hal Ashby (The Last Detail, Shampoo) directs with a light touch, letting emotional scenes play out with little intervention. There’s a strong emotional undercurrent to Harold and Maude; and while a romance of sorts does develop between the two leads, you shouldn’t let the strangeness of that divert you from the point of the movie.
Is it weird for an 80-year-old woman and a 20-year-old boy/man to fall for each other? Oh, definitely, but the movie doesn’t shy away from that. At one point it’s directly addressed, and the moment is played for humor, because it’s really beside the point of the story. Harold may be emotionally estranged from what remains of his family, but each “suicide” is clearly a cry for attention. Harold doesn’t want to die; he’s a boy who’s never felt loved and therefore simply has no idea how to live. Maude’s backstory is never implicitly stated, but it’s clear she’s led a stormy life that has seen her swept up in some pretty heavy things.
Her response to this has been to get the most out of every day she has left, and she encourages Harold to do the same. It’s an obvious point to make, but most of the people I know need something traumatic to happen to them before their life becomes much more than an extended period of compulsory employment and pointless existential meandering. I’m not so sure the romance here is between Harold and Maude as it is between Harold and Life. Existence without meaning is a pretty grim place to be, and learning to love life isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s a pretty solid message, delivered by a pretty solid film that’s fun to watch again and again - probably even after you’ve made the Dirty Old Man Hall of Fame.