Four Short Essays on “harold and Maude, Pt. 1
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Hal Ashbys film, Harold and Maude, is full of subtle uses of technique used cleverly to advance the plot of the film. Perhaps the slyest example of this is the use of overlaying once scene from the next. Often the dialogue are is over-laid from one scene to the next – for example, a shot still focused on Harolds face as his Uncle Victor begins speaking before the cut to him in his office has taken place. This is a clever way of drawing in the audience; the voice is displaced, neither coming from Harolds face and its speaker not appearing in the current scene, which is curious to the viewer and causes his attention to sharpen. Often times, the strange character talking in the next scene compels them just as much. Another example of overlaying often takes place during the movie by continuing the same conversation and speaker, but changing the scene or setting. This often happens as Maude explains her life philosophies to Harold. The two are in a green house, looking at tiny sprouting plants, and Maude begins speaking of the “circle of life” – “Theyre born, the grow, they live, they die” – and then a cut to a shot filled with plants grow even taller than Maude – “and change into something else!”
Ashby also uses great technique in cross-cutting scenes. Cross-cutting is a set of multiple cuts of two different scenes and actions (usually happening simultaneously) in order to create a sense of quickness or of being rushed. The most dramatic example of this occurs at the end of the film, cutting the scenes of Maude being rushed to the Emergency Room as Harold drives his car vigorously. The tension of Maudes approaching death as well as Harolds potentially dramatic demise as he drives his hearse off a cliff is multiplied rather than divided, a great way to emphasize the climax of such a story.
Harold and Maude become united because of the importance they place on death. Harolds attraction to the macabre is more perverse and shallow, while Maudes is much more complicated. Maude finds beauty in all aspects of life, humbled by the extraordinariness of the idea of circular life and the uncertainty of what follows “the end.” The pain she has experienced in life is very mysterious; she never speaks of her experience in a concentration camp during the Holocaust (Ashby reveals this subtly by showing a quick shot of the tell-all