Harold and Maude is my
favorite movie.
Besides its impressive
Cat Stevens soundtrack, Harold and Maude is notable for portraying
mental illness in an
irreverent but realistic manner.
Harold's
neuroticism extends through his
Freudian relationship with his domineering mother to his infatuation with Maude, a relationship based more on Harold's conception of Maude as a substitute mother/authority figure. Harold completes his
Oedipal desire by having
intercourse with Maude, perhaps an attempt to break free of the times his mother controlled his every coming and going, using cars and gifts as bribes (however controversial the act). This
climax devolves into Harold's estrangement from Maude, culminating in her
suicide. The viewer, not fully sure as to the status of Maude, may have the sense of
imperfect action --
a past continuous action.
Most striking is the
juxtaposition between
religion and
psychotherapy in this film. Harold is sent for his weekly appointments to the
psychotherapist; his decision
to
marry Maude is ultimately judged by a
Catholic priest.
The
therapist advises Harold not to marry under the watchful eye of
Freud, the shadow
antagonist of the work.
Yet this decision is confirmed by the priest who is
protected by a
photograph of
Pope Paul VI in exactly
the same spot as Freud was in the therapist's office.
Harold never seems to escape the confusion of double messages, his relationship with an overprotective mother
never
reconciled by his affair with a
widow, his religion contradicting and confirming the psychoanalytic currents that have run deep into his life.
I view
Harold and Maude as a trip into my own neuroses, a disorienting journey through what might happen in my worst
nightmares. This movie may have done a great service in putting non mentally ill people in the position of riding the waves of
manic depression.