Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude is a film about life and death and the longing for both. Seventeen year old Harold, obsessed with death and finding excitement in attending funerals, meets seventy-nine year old Maude, a woman whose life has been full of travel, art, song, and fabulous adventure. In a matter of a few days, they fall in love, and Maude restores Harold's interest in life as she prepares for her eightieth birthday- a day she seems to have chosen long ago for a special kind of farewell.

I want to comment on the theme of a lack of resolution throughout the film. Many of the scenes are morbid and graphic, yet they are never revistied or expained. Visual cues are given in attempt to lead the viewers interpretation astray for a time, yet they never quite turn out as you'd expect them to.

I find Harold and Maude to be a very visually stimulating film. There are usually several layers of action of some sort to be paid attention to in any given scene. There is a good amount of give and take in terms of this, though, and some scenes are very perfectly made to have only one intense event happening.

Until the end of the film, the scenes are introduced, acted out, and closed. There is very little if any revisting of scences. At the end, however, this shifts- just for the last few minutes. The scenes keep cutting between Harold's car driving, the hospital, back to the car, and so on- this so accurately conveys the emotions of a time like the one that Harold was going through- the feelings of things overlapping, moments caving in on eachother.

This has been such an important film to me, but I don't have much else to say about it on this blog. Please see Harold and Maude, and then find me, and we can talk about it over a cup of coffee. I'd be thrilled to hear what you think. It's a movie that really gets to core of what it means to be alive. I like movies like that.