They were meant to be. But exactly what they were meant to be is not quite clear.
1971-12-20
$1.2M
91 min
The young Harold lives in his own world of suicide-attempts and funeral visits to avoid the misery of his current family and home environment. Harold meets an 80-year-old woman named Maude who also lives in her own world yet one in which she is having the time of her life. When the two opposites meet they realize that their differences don’t matter and they become best friends and love each other.
So poor little rich kid "Harold" (Bud Cort) really does like a bit of attention seeking - constantly vying for the recognition of his mother by faking every more outlandish suicide attempts. Things is, she (Vivian Pickles) is pretty impervious to his antics and so he seeks something to alleviate his boredom elsewhere... He starts attending funerals. That's where he encounters the eccentric "Maude" (Ruth Gordon) who also has a penchant for the ceremonies - and for also pinching a car from the cemetery for a bit of a joyride afterwards. As his mother increases her activities in finding him a love match, "Harold" finds himself and his new friend spending more and more time together and he begins to learn that her live today policy is vibrant, exhilarating and contagious! Their bond grows ever stronger as the pair begin to rely more and more on each other, even to fall in love! There's a great dynamic between Cort and Gordon here. She brings out the best in her young acting companion with confident and engaging performances from both delivering a story that is funny, poignant and surreal - in almost equal measure. At times it's a touch on the wordy side, but Pickles is fun as the mother and the whole story is one of interesting characters and truth. It is short and sweet and right from the start we never get to hang around long before the pace picks up again. Great fun.
Knowing how to live or knowing how to die are virtues, difficult and debatable themes that a film almost never has the courage to address.
Harold is a young man, just arrived at adulthood, who has a morbid fascination with death: he drives hearses, goes to funerals for “fun”, rehearses his own suicide a thousand and one times. He will change under the influence of an elderly woman, whose desire to live every moment to the fullest leads her to very incorrect attitudes, such as “borrowing” other people's things without even bothering to ask for them. In a way, both have to learn from each other, and the film shows us this mutual learning process, and the special bond that is created between them.
Black comedies are never consensual, as you know, but this one is especially touching and charged with a positive spirit. The film tackles difficult, even hard themes, with a certain spirit of informality and lightness that, however, does not reduce or diminish them: what it means to die, how to live, how to enjoy life or know how to die with dignity, how to educate and understand a child, anyway. For this reason, and due to the dark comic load, it is not an easy film and will displease certain people either because of its humor or because of the themes it addresses.
The film has good production values, but still feels very cheap. The film is set in the US, but it's so inherently British that we forget about it and assume it's all set in some rural English corner. We have tasteful cinematography, low contrast and good lighting, we have good sets and costumes. I would particularly highlight the houses of Harold and Maude, because they couldn't be more different and, at the same time, more characterizing their personalities: an old-fashioned mansion turned to the past and a pleasant little house with cozy details. There's nothing very flashy, technically, and the only negative call to attention goes to the soundtrack, strident and overly flashy.
I couldn't close this text without praising the impeccable work of Bud Cort, an actor I've never seen before and who doesn't seem to have made much of a career in cinema, and the inspired performance of his counterpart, Ruth Gordon, a high-level veteran who played a huge variety of roles over the next few years.
