This film is part of Volume 2 of our summer series, Cinemaatjes, which centers around friendship.
A story about a highly unusual relationship between eighteen-year-old Harold (Bud Cort) and the eighty-year-old Maude (Ruth Gordon). Harold is a reserved, pale, and morbid young man obsessed with death. Maude, on the other hand, is a free-spirited, outspoken, and eccentric woman fascinated by life. When the two meet at the funeral of a stranger, it marks the beginning of one of the strangest yet most endearing relationships ever portrayed on film.
Hal Ashby, a countercultural and versatile filmmaker of the New Hollywood generation, masterfully balances the dark and the light in Harold and Maude, without ever tipping into sentimentality or gloom. While the film was initially met with mixed reactions—deemed too odd, subversive, and dark—it has since become the cult classic of its era. To this day, it continues to charm audiences with its blend of pitch-black humor and an underlying sense of optimism.