Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins

Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins

Although Harold and Maude is not mainstream fare – after all, a very young man falls in love with a woman who has passed the eighty thresholds- it is neither an obscure nor a cult movie, for it is included on some of the Best Comedy Top 100 lists.

From the opening scenes, it is clear that the attitudes, perspectives and humor are outré and the merriment will be brought about by the absurd, the unusual in this creative, out of the box comedy.

Harold Chasen is hanging himself in the presence of his mother, who has had just about enough, for this is just one in a series of suicide moments- when talking with his analyst, the hero does not even remember how many times did he play with this morbid idea.

After the hanging moment, Mrs. Chasen enters another room in her huge mansion, with heavy, ornate decorations, lavish furniture and everything is apparently splashed with blood, there is red over the walls, objects and again, her “dying son” is lying in a pool of blood…or paint.

Harold is obsessed with death and therefore the place to be is at funerals, where he sits in churches and chapels attends the lugubrious service, listens to obituaries and apparently enjoys all the paraphernalia associated with obsequies.

He takes so much strange pleasure in everything connected with departures that he prefers to drive a…hearse and not the cool, fast, good-looking car offered by his mother, which seemed to be a Porsche, to which the weird man takes a …torch, au lieu of taking it for a ride, with a young girl.

Given the penchant for death, it may make sense to see Harold interested in someone who has passed the edge of eighty, a woman with similar tastes and an inclination to be part of the same funerals.

Ruth Gordon was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in the role of Maude- and so was Bud Cort for his portrayal of Harold.

Harold meets Maude at a funeral- where else?- and the two get attached to each other, after their first encounter, the woman drives away with screeching tires, in a Volkswagen Beetle, which belongs to the priest who had read the obituary, but this is not unusual for the old woman.

Indeed, she may be aged in the official papers, but if we look at what she is doing, her attitude indicates either someone in her twenties or an older person that has lost her marbles- nevertheless, the heroine is very sane and aware of what she is doing and has probably always been a rebel.

Harvard Professor Ellen Langer has done research on aging – which you can access on the internet- and it proves that the attitude is essential and we can become younger in certain circumstances…perhaps adopting the Maude attitude.

On another occasion, Maude thinks she has taken someone else’s car- something she always does- but the hearse belongs to Harold, who is taken for a joy ride, in an effort to save a dying tree, using a stolen pickup truck and driving it very fast.

A policeman on a motorbike stops the car, asks for the documents, driving license, only to be told that the elderly woman does not believe in the concept of papers like that and then she drives round and round, until the motor bike falls on the road and they leave the police officer behind.

However, they meet again and the officer stops the law breaking driver, mentions some of the various laws that have been broken, stealing a car, the tree and running from the police, when…Maude jumps on the motorcycle and takes her companion with her, giving the middle finger to the man of the law, who was fooled again and wants to use his gun.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Chasen is trying to have her son settle down and change this continuous mocking, stop the series of morbid jokes and staged suicides and she uses a dating service- there was no Tinder in that age- and invites a few girls to the house, where the young man does what he likes best in such conditions.

He comes to meet the first girl, walks by and we can see him, and so can the guest, as he stops in the garden, pours some liquid over himself and proceeds to self- immolation, causing the poor girl to start shouting in horror, even after the safe, jocular Harold walks into the room.

Maude seems to have arrived at a great wisdom, for she knows that experiences are one of the keys of happiness- Positive psychology studies demonstrate that the money we may have are not well spent on objects, accumulation of material things, because humans experience a phenomenon which is called Hedonic Adaptation, translating into tediousness, a state wherein we stop enjoying the new watch, clothes and even car, with which we adapt.

In Stumbling Upon Happiness, another Harvard Professor, Daniel Gilbert explains that there are many happiness myths that are false, one of which would be the false conviction that if we would move to California, one Caribbean Island, Hawaii, we would be so happy.

It turns out that this is not what happens, for experiments have shown that once we move to this spot in Heaven, we get used with the palm trees, the ocean, the breeze and the other positive traits and see the problems- serious drought that lasted for years, violent wild fires in California, hurricanes and even without them serious electricity shortages on various islands where things are outrageously expensive…

Maude is the happy type, she nearly marries this young man, who is so much younger, and his analyst is puzzled:

“Look, the desire for the mother is part of the known concepts in psychoanalysis, but you have a desire for the grandmother type…”