Every time I went for a checkup, Dr. Schulz spent a few minutes describing and admiring the modified Jag death wagon. My roommate, Preston Mangus, and I were the first in line. We sure did. Like Dr. Schulz, we were agog when Harold modified his Jaguar XK-E sports car to look like a traditional hearse.
Perhaps it was the film's Nietzschean spirit and its call to live deliberately, thoroughly, exuberantly that appealed to the stoned and listless liberal arts students of the '70s, or perhaps it was its satire of the American bourgeoisie and all its institutions — religion, psychology, the family, the military. Much like a precocious college student, Harold Bud Cort maintains his own sense of self through constant acts of resistance against these authority figures, and appears unable to communicate in the language of groupthink.
He mocks his therapist's psychobabble with silence; his uncle in the army with overenthusiasm; his wealthy mother's conservatism with fake and theatrical acts of self-directed violence. But Harold gladly gives into the authority of Maude Ruth Gordon — a woman who steals hearses, and rescues 'public trees' from smog.
After meeting at a funeral which Harold attends in order to be closer to death, and Maude to be closer to life , the Epicurean older woman soon becomes Harold's lover and mentor.
While Harold seems to view life as merely an inconvenient and trivial path towards death, Maude is able to plumb as much meaning from life as death — and she shows Harold how. Through her love of life, Maude is able to overcome Harold's fascination with death Credit: Alamy.
During a walk through a field of daisies, Maude turns to Harold and says: "I should like to change into a sunflower most of all. They're so tall and simple.
What flower would you like to be? Look, see. Some are smaller, some are fatter. Some grow to the left, some to the right. Like Maude, a sprightly widow who latches onto the morose rich kid Harold and helps him understand why life is worth living, the film moves to its own rhythm, chases its own obsessions, and seems serenely untroubled by what anyone thinks of it.
The film is highly stylized, at times brazenly artificial, but their bond feels real. Harold and Maude made her a superstar character actress on the level of Thelma Ritter. The old lady pushes Harold to see himself as part of a much larger continuum—to recognize his uniqueness, his worth as a human being, but without letting his head get so big that he gets lost in it.
This kind of sentiment may sound corny on the page, but Harold and Maude visualizes it with such delicacy that it becomes sensible, then sublime. Then the movie cuts to a wide shot of the couple amid dozens of gravestones. After a moment, the shot zooms out even farther, revealing thousands of graves: white specks in a sea of green. Harold and Maude have vanished within the frame.
By Christina Newland. Cyril Cusack Glaucus as Glaucus. Eric Christmas Priest as Priest. Wood Psychiatrist as Psychiatrist. Susan Madigan Girlfriend as Girlfriend. Ray K. Henry Dieckoff Butler as Butler. Philip Schultz Doctor as Doctor. Hal Ashby. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit.
Young adult Harold Chasen, solitary and friendless by choice, is obsessed with death, this fascination manifesting itself in he staging his own fake suicides, driving a hearse and attending funerals, even of people he doesn't know, all to the chagrin of his exasperated wealthy mother with whom he lives. Chasen is determined for Harold to be "normal", including her sending him into therapy to deal with his issues and finding him a girlfriend through a computer dating service.
It is at a series of funerals that Harold meets Maude, on the cusp of her eightieth birthday, she who too attends funerals of strangers. Unlike Harold, Maude is obsessed with life - her own life to be more precise - she does whatever she wants to please herself, damned what others may think or how they may be affected.
Since she can't take material possessions with her, she is more interested in experiences, with whatever material possessions she has - often "borrowed" without asking - only to further those experiences. Their friendship is initially based on how the other can further their own priority. But as Maude shows Harold how to truly live, Harold falls in love with her. Their relationship, already limited in time by the sheer math, is curtailed even more as Maude shows him only not how to live well, but die well.
They will defy everything you've ever seen or heard about screen lovers!
0コメント