Harold and Maude review

Number 255 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 1971 black romantic-comedy 'Harold and Maude.'

Harold Chasen (Bud Cort) is a young man who has a morbid fascination with death. He regularly enjoys staging his own suicide much to the dislike of his mother who is worried about her social status. But Harold then meets the carefree seventy-nine year old Maude (Ruth Gordon.) The two form an unlikely relationship.

I didn't care for this film at all. I did not like Harold's character. It would be fair to describe him as a nihilist. He is spiritually deadened and struggles to find any meaning in life. it can be difficult to write these characters so they're not annoying, spoiled or entitles, which is exactly how I would define Harold.

It didn't help that he had no discernible reason for his nihilism. You can argue that his relative affluence and wealth has left him spiritually deadened. The disconnected relationship with his shallow mother has probably done little to help matters. But I can't pinpoint a specific catalyst. Harold didn't have any defined reason for being so dead. Bud Cort also played the role with a smugness that made him irritating.

I also didn't like the film's depiction of suicide. It was gratuitous. Harold stages his suicide in multiple ways from immolation, to blowing his brains out to hanging and even slitting his wrists in a vivid display of red. It was all horribly romanticised. This is even more so considering how the only meaning he finds in his life is through death. His mother constantly dismisses his behaviours too; true she sends him to a shrink, but he is equally dismissive.

I would say that this film's redeeming feature is Ruth Gordon as Maude. She was enjoyable as a hedonistic, ageing hippy who gives no second though to breaking the rules. Despite how charming she was, it is difficult to deny that her relationship with Harold was weird. Director Hal Ashby always insisted that there was nothing untoward about it, but I don't agree. She's sixty years older than him. Flip the genders and see whether it's still the same.

I didn't care for Harold and Maude. Ruth Gordon was a delight, but Hal Ashby's treatment of suicide was off-putting.