A Boy Grows Up
The move Harold and Maude is a complex concoction of many themes including the story, music, and mood. However the over arching theme is the growing pains of a boy reaching manhood at a very slow pace. At the beginning we find a young man who at the age of twenty still living with his overbearing mother. She finds his cheap theatrics of faking suicides as just minor ways of getting her attention. His uncle who is an army general is a strong force in his life. There are two minor but very important people in his life as well one is his psychiatrist and one is his preacher. Finally there is Maude she comes through his life like a comet blasting away all his preconceived ideas about what life is, and what his place in this life.
The story of Harold and Maude is one that is very important but, it could not be told if it were not for the help of the music. The music in this film is a virtual cornucopia of folk rock to classical masterpieces. Cat Stevens did most of the folk music that interwove through most of the movie. His song (sing out) is strong statement of breaking molds of structured society. This was in many ways what most of what the 60s and early 70s hippie movement brought to the front of music.
Most of the events that transpire through the movie are acts of suicide by Harold. The act suicide in real life is one of a vicious end to ones existence, and I should know, my step grandfather took his own life. In this movie Harold does this I think because it is the only way he knows he is really alive. The other events that Harold does are he goes to funerals. This way he can watch a real death right in front of his face. The acts of going to funerals lead to the word harolding which is a term that is not so common today but it means to hang out at graveyards and go to funerals of people you don’t know.
The family that Harold grows up in is very dysfunctional this shown because again this movie was made in the early part of the 70s and the hippie war cry...
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