Review for Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude tells the unlikely love story of Harold, a young boy who spends most of his time either attending funerals or staging suicides and Maude a care-free octogenarian who does exactly as she pleases. Harold's mother wants him to settle down, signs him up for computer dating (This is early 1970s, yet still eerily similar to today's Match.com) and tries to get him to be normal. Upon meeting Maude, Harold begins to embrace life and all its eccentricities that it throws at you. What it then becomes is a deeply black comedy with a wonderful feeling of satire, beauty and a love for life.

This is one of the strangest films I have ever seen. I am really not sure what I am supposed to make of it. I enjoyed it, but I just couldn't tell you why. maybe it is because it doesn't take itself too seriously. Harold's staging of a number of suicides seems at first to be a cry for help, but it's not, it's someone who is putting on a performance. These scenes can be a little eerie, especially when you are unsure how he is doing it, why he is doing it and most of the time are fooled into thinking it is real. It is almost like a magic trick, with Harold using fake blood, guns with blanks and other tricks, but each time he does for a split second you are convinced that this is the real one and it is only his mother's blase attitude to it that makes you aware that it is not real.

Performances by Bud Cort as Harold and Ruth Gordon as Maude are perfect and though I will admit the love story is a little strange, it is dealt with sensitively so that you can understand why he falls for it. This of course makes the ending all the more beautifully devastating. This is all brought together by the amazing screenplay by Colin Higgins who went on to write Nine to Five. His ability to mix the absurd, the dark and the romantic together is just masterful.

One of the other aspects of this film which works so well is the music by Cat Stevens. This drifts in and out of this film and really punches home some of the emotional scenes. Director Hal Ashby weaves all these elements together which is amazing considering this is only his second film as a Director, but I feel that his earlier work as an Editor, which won him the Oscar for his work on In The Heat of the Night trained him in how to compose shots and put the film together.

Despite how great the transfer and sound of this Blu-ray is, I would say the extras are a little threadbare on this disk. A discussion by critic David Cairns is fine and shows just how the film was received in 1971 as well as its legacy in past forty years. It's a shame he wasn't brought in to contribute to the Commentary as the one provided by Producer Charles B. Mulvehill and Hal Ashby biographer Nick Dawson is fine, but nothing spectacular. However, if you are a fan of the film they do reveal a lot of stories and bit and pieces about the making of the film.

The set does come with a 40 page booklet about the film, though I do wish that if they do this that they at least include this as an optional extra on the disk too. I understand that some people do not like to read from a screen, but some of the extra pieces such as the archive imagery would have been nice to see on the screen too.

Harold and Maude is not a film that you rush into without knowing what you are getting yourself into. If you don't have a sense of humour you might miss a lot of the satire and indeed most of the jokes, but if you like your comedy dark and your stories beautiful then you should give this film a try.