‘A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life…’
Romantic comedies are so damn conventional. Lonely guy obsessed with death meets elderly woman who teaches guy how to enjoy life. It’s a tale as old as time. Actually… that sounds pretty strange, what are we doing here?
Yes. Harold and Maude is about as far away from conventional as it’s possible to get without having the relationship feature a grown man and a 13-year-old girl, but somehow, director Hal Ashby, writer Colin Higgins and a talented cast make it work.
Harold (Bud Cort) has become so morbid that he spends most of his time staging ever more elaborate fake suicide attempts, much to the consternation of his wealthy mother Mrs. Chasen (Vivian Pickles). Things turn around for Harold when he meets Maude (Ruth Gordon) – a vivacious 80-year-old with a lust for life.
This is a weird premise, there is no getting away from it. All involved had to handle the material carefully to make it work. This is not a gross out comedy, or a way to poke fun at the neurotic and the elderly, quite the opposite. Instead, Harold and Maude is a genuinely beautiful attempt to analyse the human condition through the eyes of two incredibly well drawn characters.
All of this would have been meaningless without the right cast of course and Cort and Gordon absolutely smash it out of the park. Gordon in particular, off the back of such a menacing turn in Rosemary’s Baby just a few years earlier, is utterly wonderful, in a performance that was criminally overlooked by the Oscar committee. A lovely Cat Stevens heavy soundtrack rounds things off nicely and a skinny 90 minute running time is the cherry atop a truly unique cake. In fact, I don’t really like cherries, so in this case, it’s the pink icing atop a truly unique cake. It’s my cake. Back off.
Harold and Maude is funny, gripping and thoroughly charming. A thoroughly refreshing cinematic experience.