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I first saw Harold and Maude when I was 17 and feeling a lot like Harold- a bit depressed, thinking about death a lot (more afraid of it than seeking it out, unlike him), and questioning what this crazy world was all about! That movie rocked my world! I found it so beautiful that Maude was so filled with life, and able to embrace both the dark and light sides of human existance. She didn't think Harold was crazy or weird because of his death fixation- she understood him. She knew that the understand the beauty of everything, you must understand the cycles of life, life, death, rebirth. Creation and destrcution.
Does anyone have any philosophical interpretations of this movie? Mine are basically stated above- Harold was backing away from life and Maude taught him how to embrace it all. He was looking to be reborn (ie- sticking his head through the vagina wood statue, wanting to be born all over again), and through Maude's death, she was reborn in him. There are a lot of life, death and rebirth themes in this movie- with Maudes death and Harold playing her song and throwing away his death phase (crashing his hearse), embracing "life."
I think this movie is HIGHLY profound and had a deep effect on my life. I hate when I show it to people and they merely think it's a comedy. It's SO much more than that.
Other themes I've noticed is the depiction of authority and societial figures- religion, law and psychology- poking fun at anything organized and stuffy, further emphasizing that individuality is where it's AT!
I would love to explore more with everyone, give me your input!
Does anyone have any philosophical interpretations of this movie? Mine are basically stated above- Harold was backing away from life and Maude taught him how to embrace it all. He was looking to be reborn (ie- sticking his head through the vagina wood statue, wanting to be born all over again), and through Maude's death, she was reborn in him. There are a lot of life, death and rebirth themes in this movie- with Maudes death and Harold playing her song and throwing away his death phase (crashing his hearse), embracing "life."
I think this movie is HIGHLY profound and had a deep effect on my life. I hate when I show it to people and they merely think it's a comedy. It's SO much more than that.
Other themes I've noticed is the depiction of authority and societial figures- religion, law and psychology- poking fun at anything organized and stuffy, further emphasizing that individuality is where it's AT!
I would love to explore more with everyone, give me your input!
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Re: Exploration of themes
Tue, March 9, 2004 - 6:57 AMTotally, I think your interpretations are right on! Every time I would see the movie I would pick up more important details. Like, the very last seconds of his dancing with the banjo, to me, connects to Maude's question the first time they talked, "Do you dance?"
Another part that strikes me is one of the profoundest parts of the movie is when he sees the number on her arm, and she points to the seagulls and says "Dreyfuss once wrote from Devil's Island that he could see the most glorious birds. Many years later he realized that they had only been seagulls. But TO ME they will always be glorious birds." She doesn't make any direct reference to her concentration camp experience but instead talks about someone else who had been in one of the worst prisons in the world, and how even from inside hell they saw something wondrous and beautiful. And when they were out of that hellhole it ceased to be miraculous and beautiful to them, but SHE never lost the sense of the beauty that she had felt then that probably helped her survive. Even though that beauty is commonplace. And that has a lot of relevance to anyone struggling with some kind of hell in this life, that no matter what your situation there is always beauty to be seen, sometimes in things that are so commonplace that most people take them for granted.
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Re: Exploration of themes
Tue, March 9, 2004 - 4:49 PMyes, I too love how they show the numbers on her arm but never talk about it. I think it is very beautifully done. Most movies would make a big deal about it and talk about it, because they may not trust the audience's intelligence. However, H&M shows it very quickly and everything is understood. Seeing the numbers on her arm almost explains everything about Maude's personality. She is free as a bird, out of a cage. She talked about liberating canaeries at the pet store. SHE is a liberated canaery! (Sorry I can't spell) At another point in the movie she is talking to Harold about her ex-husband, and she says, "That was before." And I think she's making reference to before the Holocaust. I think her husband died in the Holocaust.
Have you read the book? It's a bit different than the movie and talks about Harold's dad's death... which is never said but kind of implied in the movie. -
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Re: Exploration of themes
Tue, March 9, 2004 - 6:44 PMThe book has things added, as well as some dialogue in the original script that was cut out. I actually read the ORIGINAL version of the script, which is in the UCLA film school library, because it was written as Colin Higgins' masters thesis when he was a student at UCLA film school. Then he adapted the novel from it. His landlady fell in love with the script, and, as the ex-wife of some Paramount bigwig, she had a lot of contacts at Paramount and managed to get the movie produced. Her name was Mildred Lewis (a name which should be familiar if you pay attention to the opening credits). -
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Re: Exploration of themes
Tue, April 6, 2004 - 7:03 PMI'm glad you could confirm my suspicions about the screenplay and novel. I always suspected that the screenplay came first, and then someone said to Higgins, "yo, dude, if that's gonna be a movie you could get two birds with one stone by making a novel out of if."
The problem being that the novel version really basically sucks awefully. It has no life or spirit on its own. It's 99% identical in plot and dialogue to the movie, but the characters and story and everything seemed purely incidental (and not integral, if you know what I mean) to me. But the movie.... how sublime.
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Re: Exploration of themes
Wed, March 10, 2004 - 10:39 PMGroovy posts Heather and Gayle :)
I liked what you said about the themes, Heather... The one I saw differently was Harold having his head in the vagina sculpture and carressing and smelling it. The connection that
-I- had placed on that was that he was learning to FEEL, learning about desire, learning about women for the first time in his life. Before he met Maude, if he had encountered that statue, would he have had that reaction? Unlikely. It was connecting with her that made him begin to feel things other than sorrow and dread of life.
That's the way -I- saw that part. It's interesting to hear a different perspective. :)
And yes, I love the play of authority throughout the movie. You see it in the depiction of his uncle (is it his uncle?) who his mother sends him to, to "straighten him up" and show him what it's like in the army, you see it in the police officers, and church officials.
A brilliant movie! -
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Re: Exploration of themes
Fri, May 7, 2004 - 5:06 PMI think another theme that was understated but so permeated the film that I believe it was one of -or maybe even *the*- central message was that of individual revolt (as opposed to revolt that follows somebody else's plan).
They talked about it directly in the scene where Maude's remembering her husband, but it appears symbolically in almost every scene. the flowers-and-headstones, the yellow-umbrella-among-black-ones-at-a-funeral (which also had a wonderful parallel to the little girl in same shot :) the tree-snarfing, the cop, - even Maude's manner of leaving this world - the list could be as long as my arm..
as well, Maudes validation of Harolds attempts at revolt - her message that hes not alone, that hes not the first one in the world to need revolt, but actually the latest addition to a long & distinguished line ("well, you'd be in good company..")
- along with gentle, loving guidance away from self-destructive forms to ones that will be more satisfying..
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Re: Exploration of themes
Sat, September 4, 2004 - 1:59 AMI love your point about Harold being reborn through the wooden vagina sculpture! He's making moaning sounds too, which strengthens the analogy. It is the anti-authoritarian spirit of the film, though, which touches me most deeply. I love the irony of Harold wearing the same outfit as his psychiatrist, then totally mocking his questions: "Psych: Did you perform all of these suicides for your mother's benefit? Harold: No, I would not say 'benefit.'" And the moments where we can tell Harold has learned something from Maude, not through some kind of heavy-handed narrative device, but throught the dialog, like when Maude suggests that they transplant the tree: "H: You can't do that, it's public property. M: Exactly! H: We'll need a shovel." I love moments like this when Harold's innate anti-authoritarian spirit is stimulated and awakened, because he lets it occur so easily and naturally. It is as if to say, if we all just let nature take its course with us, we would tend away from organized authority and institutions and towards Maude-ness. Maude's anti-materialism is a corollary to her anti-authoritarianism, i.e. "people shouldn't get too attached to things," "here today, gone tomorrow," etc., sentiments which run against the grain of the conventions of American society. For me, art must reject authority in order to be great (the task of the artist is to defamiliarize, to challenge the conventions to which the jaded observer has become accustomed but exposing the "authority" which that observer has come to respect as arbitrary, fraudulent, and void), and this film certainly qualifies. -
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Re: Exploration of themes
Sat, September 4, 2004 - 8:34 AMare you guys into h+m's director hal ashby's other movies as well?
i read about him in that book 'easy riders, raging bulls'. it was a really interesting book - hal was really anti-authoritarian and one of the most talented of that early 70's group. he made 'coming home' and 'last detail' which i think are less fanciful than h+m but are pretty amazing too..
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