Harold and Maude
- IMDb link: 0067185
- IMDb rating: 7.8 (86,167 votes)
- Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Director: Hal Ashby, Bud Cort
- Cast: Cyril Cusack, Ruth Gordon, Vivian Pickles and others
- Release date: 20 Dec 1971
- Release year: 1971
- Runtime: 91 minutes
- Country: United States
- Keywords: funeral, older woman younger man relationship, existentialism, eccentricity, fake suicide, alienation, misfit, nihilism, anti conformity, philosophy of life
Plot:
Young adult Harold Chasen, solitary and friendless by choice, is obsessed with death, this fascination manifesting itself in he staging his own fake suicides, driving a hearse and attending funerals, even of people he doesn't know, all to the chagrin of his exasperated wealthy mother with whom he lives. Mrs. Chasen is determined for Harold to be "normal", including her sending him into therapy to deal with his issues and finding him a girlfriend through a computer dating service. It is at a series of funerals that Harold meets Maude, on the cusp of her eightieth birthday, she who too attends funerals of strangers. Unlike Harold, Maude is obsessed with life - her own life to be more precise - she does whatever she wants to please herself, damned what others may think or how they may be affected. Since she can't take material possessions with her, she is more interested in experiences, with whatever material possessions she has - often "borrowed" without asking - only to further those experiences. Their friendship is initially based on how the other can further their own priority. But as Maude shows Harold how to truly live, Harold falls in love with her. Their relationship, already limited in time by the sheer math, is curtailed even more as Maude shows him only not how to live well, but die well.