It's Always Trouble: Harold and Maude

This one is for that stupid thing called Valentine's Day: one of my favorite movies about love, Harold and Maude.

Some films become such a cult phenomenon that, through time, increased popularity and critical appreciation, you wonder if they should be categorized as bona fide cult films anymore. If they, for instance, make AFI's top 100 greatest comedies, ranked in between My Man Godfrey and Manhattan, do they lose their (pardon the term) quirky appeal? When it comes to Hal Ashby's charming, funny, poignant, death-obsessed-yet-life-affirming Harold and Maude, the answer is no, gloriously no. The cult still stands.

The next time the picture plays your local revival house, go see for yourself. The beloved movie still draws its own special audience, not an obvious one, not one dressed in costumes or yelling lines back at the screen, but a crowd of fans carrying a personal association with the picture. I once watched the movie in Portland, Ore., sitting next to a guy who cried his eyes out and cheered when Harold breaks the fourth wall (perhaps one of the most satisfying camera addressing moments in all of cinema). When the picture was over, I saw the broken up fella climb into his car -- a dog-catching truck. Though I'll see it solo, many bring friends, dates, neighbors, whomever, partially to watch a unique movie, partially to show a side of oneself, and partially to test a friend or potential boyfriend/girlfriend (in my case anyway). It's hard not to think that if someone close to you doesn't like Harold and Maude, then they might not like you.

But a lot of people didn't appreciate the movie when it was first released. Viewers were weirded out, many critics didn't like it, and the studio was, no doubt, frightful of a May-December romance involving not just an older woman but an old older woman. And then there are those modern audiences that find it all so corny, hippie dippy hokum about flowers and peace and living life to the fullest. I never understand this. Since Ashby is such a sincere filmmaker, I can't read one false sentiment in one frame of this movie (and, honestly, when I think of Ashby's untimely death -- why not try to live life to its fullest?). Also, so many of the picture's moving moments aren't what is said, but what is filmed: Harold drinking an Orange Crush in a car wash, Harold waiting nervously in an emergency room, Maude with that yellow umbrella, Harold sticking his head out of the converted hearse window and letting the wind run through his hair. Ashby sees the beauty in the young, awkward and quiet, and the old, affirmative and loud, and it is, again, just so beautiful.

I first took in my shyer Holden Caulfield-esque boyfriend Bud Cort as Harold, a wealthy, death-fixated 20-year-old who haunts funerals, on VHS as a girl. I watched it so many times that I didn’t bother to return the video (sorry American Family Video).  Having once poured a gruesome amount of ketchup all over myself, and laid out on the living room floor for an hour, “dead,” while my mother stepped over me to grab the vacuum cleaner, I could relate (I was five). I also pulled the Christmas tree on myself one year, after making my mother an alleged toy boat out of tampons and a paper towel roll (I was six; cut me some slack; and the presents were tossed -- I was upset). So, when Harold converts his nifty little sports car into a hearse and taxes his droll mother (Vivian Pickles) with such fantastic, elaborately staged fake suicide attempts, I was supremely impressed.

And I adored Ruth Gordon as Maude, the 79-year-old free spirit who, like an elder screwball heroine, drives any car she sees, saves sick trees and, most importantly, believes in living. I firmly believe in trying out your supposed opposite not only because (as they say) "opposites attract," but because you never know if you've actually found your twin. Harold and Maude have something in common (a death fixation), but it's deeper, more complicated. When they venture past funerals and both revel in life, their differences complement one another and, in a unique way, mirror each other. The time is now, especially when one will soon end up cold, dead on a slab. So, fall in love. Fall in love hard and fall in love fast and fall in love with the wrong person. If they love you back, it's always worth it. Down with the consternation of society!

And that could have been that, a picture created merely to shake viewers up with a coupling one never sees in pictures, much less in real life. But that soulful humanist Ashby (who on certain days, weeks, months, is one of my favorite filmmakers with his other perfect movies like The Landlord, The Last Detail, Coming Home, Shampoo and Being There) showed that he had more on his mind by crafting a small masterpiece that blends black comedy with genuine  emotion without feeling cloying. And it's all so wonderfully acted, exquisitely filmed, brilliantly framed and edited (Wes Anderson had to have studied this movie) and beautifully scored (with now classic songs written and performed by Cat Stevens), that, no matter how many times I see it, I cannot resist. Yes it's about dying, but it's one of the sweetest, most life-affirming movies you'll ever see about death. And if you're alone on Valentine's Day, it might play even better.

Below is one of cinema's most beautiful drives. If you haven't seen the movie, don't watch, but surely you know the end...

Comments

[Bill Stankus]

You mentioned about the reaction when H&M was first released. I remember that is was like an odd puzzle piece that didn't quite fit with the other pieces being released at that time. In context of the time, it was quirky in a different way, initially we just didn't know how to relate to it.

There's no denying Shampoo, Being There and The Last Detail all were sensational... especially The Last Detail.

After seeing it, if ever I wanted a buddy to back me up in a bar - it was hard ass sailor Nicholson.

[Angela Burton]

Harold and Maude, one of my favorite films of all time. Ruth Gordon was exquisite in this part. You had to love her.

I have made a habit of falling in love with the wrong people, and must say, it is always thrilling!

[lucky]

Thank you for reminding me of Harold & Maude - this is exactly what I need these days and I am going to watch it tonight crying my eyes out for sheer joy and solace!

[Pau Brazill]

Lovely article, kim. i remeber H&M being on BBC2 on a Sunday night. I was dreading school the next day-as usual and it certainly took the edge off my teenage angst!Cheers!Paul

[Mr. Peel]

That was beautiful. Just beautiful. It's playing at the New Beverly over the next few nights and now I may have to go to see that yellow umbrella once again and remember, as you put it, what it's like to fall in love with the wrong person. It can be a glorious feeling and, to steal a line, gives you something to talk about in the locker room. If I don't make it, maybe I'll take your advice and watch it on Saturday night. I have a feeling I'll need it.

[Nicole]

Beautifully said. This movie has changed my life, and I show to people to test them (friends, etc), and if they don't it, I wonder how they could like me! After seeing this, I became the world's biggest Bud Cort fan, and I have been analyzing Harold and Maude's symbolic, complex, underlying meanings since.

[Campaspe]

Wonderful post. I think the test of this movie's staying power is that the May-December love story still has the power to repel those who don't see love as an essentially spiritual experience. It's a work of true Romanticism, but as a longtime reader I have observed that for all your tough-cookie-ness and deeply, authentically hip taste, you're a Romantic yourself. You stand outed, Miss Morgan. :)

[kim]

Oh Siren...I'm a lover *and* a fighter. A "tough cookie"? They crumble sometimes.

And thank you:)

[Craig]

I fell in love for the first time while watching Harold and Maude. It was an ill-fated match. (Aren't all first loves after all)Films were more alive in the seventies it seems to me and the best filmmakers of today are the ones who have absorbed that glorious decade of movies in full(Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson,David Gordon Green... )

I also recommend Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind another bittersweet film about the impossibility as well as the necessity of love and pain.

[Craig]

I wsih to elaborate alttle on Harold and Maude and the effect it has always had on me. I suppose when i first saw it 15 years ago when I was a teenager I identified strongly with Bud Cort's tragic intensity and yearning for the unusual. You sould see the beauty of Ruth Gordon through his eyes and it hurt. It still does.It reminds me of the line in Sideways about the inability to relate to 90 percent of humanity. I suppose intense movie love is both an escape from and an engagement with life's ineradicable pain and loneliness. This precious solace can be enough from time to time.

More Valentine's day recommendations- Roxanne,World's Greatest Lover,Modern Romance(or anything by Albert Brooks really)
Eyes Wide Shut and Who's Afraid of Virginia woolf(the two greatest films about the necessary accomodations of marriage)
Sunrise,A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid(1972),The Young Girls of Rochefort, Avanti and for the more adventurous-In the Realm of the Senses, Crash(1996),In the Cut,Auto Focus(an anti-romantic film),Gun Crazy,The Bigamist, Craig's Wife, and Todd Haynes Poison.

[Max Allan Collins]

What a lovely piece on a great film. In the mid-'70s, when I was just starting out as a writer, I taught parttime at a community college. For several semesters my job was to teach cops in Davenport, Iowa -- I taught with my back to the gun range and all those uniforms sitting in front of me. One class was in the morning, the other in the evening, and rather than commute back to Muscatine thirty miles away, I would stay in Davenport and go to a movie. HAROLD AND MAUDE was playing in a long run, and I saw it once a week for maybe nine months. Never got tired of it. The experience of haunting a movie theater to see a beloved film that may disappear at any moment is, I'm afraid, lost in the age of home video.

[Stacie]

Falling in love with life.

I can't state enough how much I adore this movie, and it would take all day to list everything I love about it, from the obvious to the minute. But man, Vivian Pickles.

And Sunshine Dore slipping as she heads around that corner...

[umlaut]

Thanks for this piece. I live 5 minutes from the cemetery where H. & M. meet in the film and drive past *that* gate at least once a week; I think about H&M every time.

[Dangenbrack]

I remember my parents getting a giggle about how Bud Cort's character reminded them of someone they knew very well....it occurred to me that they were talking about me....so I watched the movie again....and they were right. It's funny to be able to see yourself how others see you, and I can see myself through my parents eyes by watching H & M.