ScoobyMint Disappointment for a huge fan!

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

davyyells As someone who rarely writes reviews, I must say that this is most definitely the most beautiful movie of all time. I started it with very low hopes and by the end I was stuck looking at the stunning masterpiece. I must also say that I had never cried during a movie or television show before. I've watched many movies. This was the only movie I've ever cried and it wasn't just a tear, I mean I was in full baby mode. The movie shows Maude teaching Harold something about life that I've never seen a movie, or even person, be able to teach anyone. You sit there as a viewer thinking you're watching Maude teach Harold but before you know it, Maude has taught you.

Mikelikesnotlikes I've been choosing movies from 'best of' lists on the internet. This eclectic method is fraught with widely varying opinions that may not reflect your own, and doesn't necessarily cull out the dross.HAROLD AND MAUDE is not dross, yet it is not the high art some would have you believe. It's an inoffensive, entertaining story nevertheless, and most of the action held my attention throughout. I had absolutely no idea how old this film was, though this historical factor merely made the subject matter more interesting.Harold is hard to identify with as a super-rich, attention-deprived, depressed and lonely man-child. Maude is a hyperactive, unconventional, kleptomaniac. As a holocaust survivor we are supposed to forgive the fact she steals whatever she wants while spouting truisms. I presume we're supposed to take away the message that life holds many wonders as long as we don't waste time trying to fit in or observe social norms. Unfortunately, style overrides substance and this movie fails to deliver its metaphors effectively.Both Harold and Maude were well acted in a deliberate over-the-top manner. The direction and writing is also very good. They must have bought the rights to Cat Stevens' entire album and I liked these touches of 70's culture as they popped up here and there. Overall HAROLD AND MAUDE is too clever for its own good but an entertaining watch.

amplexuslotus Hal Hashby's masterpiece, Harold and Maude is one of the best movies ever made. It would never have gotten approval in our dark 21st century.Filmed mostly in northern California, the cinematography really captures the 70's. Amazing script by Colin Higgins who sadly died young. Fantastic performances by all especially Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, Charles Tyner and Vivian Pickles. Wonderful set design that evokes the 70's and earlier decades (Maude's home is full of character and memorabilia.)The film touches on so many subjects (being a misfit, youth, old age, war, politics, life and death) but for me the main theme is to enjoy life - even the bad stuff. That life is worth living. And that maybe for some of us the only way to understand the precious joy of life is to engage with those who are closer to death.Probably the finest soundtrack of any film entirely by Cat Stevens.

sharky_55 What makes Ruth Gordon's Maude so surprisingly enchanting is that we don't expect a seventy nine year old to be so full of life, so vivacious, so contrary to her appearance. Of course it seems trite these days because every indie film has copied the same mantra into sexier, younger characters that go about life-affirming journeys into the vast unknown. It works and feels natural here because she doesn't have that infinite lifetime to look forward to, that youthful aimlessness; she's tethered by her age and instead of letting it define her, she makes the most of her time left. Opposing her is Cort's Harold. They both embrace death but with different attitudes - it is ironic that it is the nineteen year old who feels so suffocated by the idea of dying one day as opposed to the seventy nine year old. They are fascinated by it, but for different reasons. Cort is a great casting; gangly, impossibly tall, like an overgrown teenager who hasn't quite physically matured but wants to seem so. During the therapist sessions the formal dress is a mirror image itself, and he initially has the same lofty, cross-legged pose. His blank, unblinking face seems to be deathly close to collapse at any moment; perhaps it is an extra layer of ghostly white make-up (Roy Andersson recalls a similar technique). His deadpan approach is crucial to the dark humour of his 'deaths' that become a running gag. Some of these unfold with an almost magical realism behind them - a figure outside in white cloth sets fire to itself, and Harold walks into the frame the next second. And the same goes for the way he re-appears on the cliff in the ending. The others are hilarious because of the non-reaction of his mother, whom has long become accustomed to these pranks and does not show the emotion that Harold wishes she shows. Her dismissive chuckles as she fills in his dating profile and waves off his shooting in the head, and the funniest reveal of them all, as she gets into her rhythm for her daily laps in the pool, and completely ignores the floating, lifeless body of Harold as if it were just a fallen leaf. Or perhaps the opposite, the hysterical over- reaction from the last date, a thespian who marvels at Harold's act of seppuku, and falls into her own dramatic rendition of the Romeo & Juliet climax. Viewing it from a modern lens Maude's hippie philosophy seems a little less inspiring, and a little more exasperating, especially as she circles around and then steals the police motorcycle. But isn't that sort of perspective exactly what she is trying to combat? Harold admits a desire to fit into society, and if not, he might as well die because there is little else to treasure in this short, miserable existence. Maude accepts that same fleeting view, but pushes him to find that spark and will to live and not waste anymore of his young life moping around because death might be around the corner anyway (and she shows this by throwing away the necklace). And so, farewelling him at eighty, she teaches him the most important lesson of them all. The constant Cat Williams is a little coy, but it's perfect for that soft banjo solo that symbolises a revitalised outlook on life and a goodbye to that former obsessive morbidity (the hearse).