Blu-ray Review Harold and Maude Blu-ray Review (1 Viewer)

[Colin Jacobson]

Originally Posted by TonyD /t/321117/harold-and-maude-blu-ray-review/30#post_4007815
It never makes sense to me when someone says they don't see why one would make so many comments about a movie they don't like, this is a discussion web site, so we discuss why we like or don't like a movie.
Also the idea that someone must say that If you don't like a movie then you obviously don't get it doesn't make one bit of logical sense.
What's to get? I watched a movie and I didn't like it.
The characters, the story, the actors, whatever it may be I don't like the movie, why do I have to get it? And what does that even mean?
I agree with Colin on this one.
I saw it about 6 years ago when I was about 40 and the movie was a bore to me.
I don't like any of these people in the movie.
How is this one a comedy, I know what a dark or black comedy is but what was the funny in Harold and Maude?
It was all dark and nothing else.

The four sweetest words in the English language!

 

[MielR]

I'm very sorry they didn't track down any of the deleted scenes for this blu-ray. There were some drastic cuts made to the film, and some very upset people when the film was released.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Ended up watching this tonight. In a weird way, Labor Day was the perfect day to watch Harold and Maude, in the last embers of summer.

Enjoyed it very much. Harold had a very specific way of expressing his opinions to his mother, which I enjoyed.

But it's Maude's zest for life that really brings the movie to life. Her arrival into the picture is like a breath of fresh air. When she was talking about her past in Austria, and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I, I started doing the math on what she would have experienced over there, and then seeing the Auschwitz prisoner number tattoo confirmed it.

EDIT: World War I

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Ended up watching this tonight. In a weird way, Labor Day was the perfect day to watch Harold and Maude, in the last embers of summer.

Enjoyed it very much. Harold had a very specific way of expressing his opinions to his mother, which I enjoyed.

But it's Maude's zest for life that really brings the movie to life. Her arrival into the picture is like a breath of fresh air. When she was talking about her past in Austria, and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War II, I started doing the math on what she would have experienced over there, and then seeing the Auschwitz prisoner number tattoo confirmed it.

I always showed that film in my screenwriting class as an example of a great character script that didn't rely on FX or budget. And Maude's blink-and-you-miss it reveal of the Auschwitz tattoo was the secret key to her entire character. Having witnessed and experienced the worst of humanity or horror, her subsequent life became an expression of every day a gift and a joy. Screenwriter Colin Higgins died much too young of AIDS, but even before his diagnosis, he beautifully expressed the zen of mindfulness and grateful living through Maude.

Spoiler

The last line in the film still gets to me every time I screened that film. Harold tells Maude he loves her as she's dying. She tells him that's great, now "go and love some more." A boy obsessed with death is taught how to love life from a woman soon to die.