Harold and Maude
Jul 08 - Jul 09, 2008
Hal Ashby, USA, 1971, 35mm, 91 min
Harold is 20 years old, rich, obsessed with death and reigned over by a dominant mother whom he tries in vain to prompt towards some show of emotion through his attempts at suicide. He has no interest in girls his age. Free-spirited Maude is 79, obsessed with crazy ideas and is glad to be in the world despite knowing that nothing and no one lasts forever. They both share a curious passion for visiting funerals for the therapeutic value, and it is at one such funeral that they first meet and forge a peculiar romantic relationship, united in their desire to rebel against conventional superstitions of youth, age, death and sex. Hal Ashby’s black comedy is a provocative and unsentimental love story that not only outraged conservative moviegoers at the beginning of the 1970s but rebellious youth as well. The film took on radical positions with humor and an original concept of the world, defying all norms and ideologies. That, coupled with a wall-to-wall Cat Stevens soundtrack, makes this cult classic a sublime experience.