Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude: Harold and Maude is a 70's cult classic exploring romance and the meaning of life.  The filmmaker in this instance approaches cliche movie topics in a shocking and humorous manner. Harold, in his 20's, is a morbid youth and therefore romantically unsuccessful and disinterested. His mother wants to find him a wife, but Harold takes every opportunity of destroying these potential connections. In one scene, Harold scares away a young girl by pretending to be committing suicide by setting himself on fire. As the girl flees and Harold and his mother stand together, we have a very interesting scene where the characters pull the audience into the film. Harold stands with a smirk and looks directly at the audience, suggesting that the stunt he pulled is a secret between him and us, effectively breaking the 4th wall. We see his mother look over at her son, look him up and down while judging and measuring up the boy, and wait for him to turn. As Harold turns, his head, which had been held high, bows in submission to his mother's stern glare.
Despite Harold's apparent abhorrence to romantic attachment, he forms an odd connection with an 80 year old woman named Maude who teaches him about love and life. The two form a romantic bond and we see Harold transformed through this connection.
This film has powerful imagery and beautiful symbolism. One scene shows the couple sitting in a graveyard among an expanse of identical, white gravestones. As the camera zooms out, the gravestones become more similar. Another scene shows them in a field of daisies. Harold says he would like to be a daisy because they're all alike, but Maude points out that they each have remarkable differences. This is true also of the gravestones which may appear identical, but each have a name of an individual. Through the film, Maude acts as a guide to Harold, reorienting his perspective and thus broadening it.

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