Film Friday: How Much DID Wes Anderson Learn from Harold and Maude?

Last week, I watched Harold and Maude, Hal Ashby's 1971 cult classic, with my eldest, who is fourteen, fairly goth in taste, and possessed of a pretty morbid sense of humor.  I had intended to make a post about it for my first film friday in ages, but I let time slip, and then, as you probably read, death kind of took a hand and made me write.

When I watched the film, for the first time in perhaps decades, I was struck by its composition.  The story line is so funny of course, and when you watch it the first time -- I was probably fourteen -- you are fascinated by the odd couple, by Maude's eccentric joie de vivre, her almost Zen-like approach to other people's property, and her crazy driving, teaching Harold, whose obsession with death manifests in driving around in a hearse and staging fake suicides, to celebrate life and living.  And let's face it, the story is wonderfully funny, touching, and occasionally thought-provoking.  But pay attention to the choices Hal Ashby makes in how he frames his shots, and you realize how much of a specific type of world he is creating, especially the world associated with Harold's life.

One of my favorite early shots is from the first time we see Harold at a psychiatrist's office:

Here we see first of all Harold's subversion of the traditional position of the patient.  But we also notice that Harold is directly imitating the psychiatrist in clothing, manner, and even pose. (The actor playing the doctor is G.Wood, known for his appearances in both the film and tv versions of M*A*S*H, looking purposely ridiculous with a rug on his head.)

(I know this image doesn't show Harold in the exact same pose, but I'm too lazy to screen capture my dvd, so I'm just google-imaging. forgive.)

Harold's home is the perhaps stereotypical mansion of the bored/boring well-to-do.  Vivian Pickles' performance as Harold's mother is a brilliant portrayal of the society woman who has absolutely no idea who her son is and what he needs. Here's a shot from the first suicide Harold presents:

It is a castle filled with things, Harold's home, but there is no soul to it, just Mummy's overbearing, self-absorbed personality.  Yet Mrs. Chasen never becomes a caricature, like, say, Matilda's mom in the stage and screen adaptations of Roald Dahl's children's book.  Credit Ms. Pickles for that.

Maude is an intrusion into straight society, the society that holds on to rituals and to principles like private property.  In perhaps an obvious manner, Ashby shows this when Maude leaves a funeral that Harold is attending.  (For those who don't know the film, going to strangers' funerals is one of Harold's hobbies, and it is in so doing that the two meet.)

Maude refuses to accept the conventions -- easier to do of course when one is attending a total stranger's funeral.  Her home is warm, and full of living things and life, unlike the sterile stiffness of Harold's mansion:

One of the most famous tracking shots in the film occurs during a picnic the two friends have in a cemetery.  As the couple chat about life and death, the camera pulls slowly, as Cat Stevens' "Where to the Children Play" accompanies the shot, until we are in a sea of white stones:

Consider also the use of Stevens' "Trouble," during the "hospital montage," as Maude tells Harold at her 80th birthday celebration that she "took the pills" and will die at about midnight, and again the shots of Harold waiting and waiting for news if the doctors could save her.

The use of Stevens' music has contributed to the film's cult classic status, and here we might as well bring in the obvious point: how much Wes Anderson has "stolen" from Ashby's film.  The careful framing of Anderson's shots is the most apparent.  There are too many one can choose from, but here's one from Rushmore I love:

There he is, Max Fischer, against all odds, the genius misfit.  This is of course another element of Anderson's films that owes something to Harold and Maude.  His main characters are usually of the well-to-do, the disaffected wealthy rich who can't find their place in the world.  And  has anyone used music the way Anderson does that is so clearly influenced by Ashby's use of Stevens?  (As if to make the point, Rushmore features a Stevens song, though not one of his early-seventies folk-rock classics, but one of his sixties shiny pop tunes, "Here Comes My Baby.")

In showing the film to my eldest, I had hoped to impart some kind of "lesson" about enjoying life, something she has a hard time doing.  (I realize now, as a parent, that it's what being a teenager is.)  I also thought she'd find Harold's fake suicides gloriously sick, especially that involving his last computer-date, since she participates with Harold, and re-enacts Juliet's farewell speech. (The kid is a big Shakespeare fan, for which I am eternally grateful.)  Perhaps the film will grow on her, much like it has on a generation.  It's important to remember that the film was a disappointment at the box office, and that it was over time that it achieved cult status, due to art house screenings and of all things cable tv services; I recall seeing it for the first time on PRISM, which was the local cable tv's version of HBO at the time, only showing movies, uncut and commercial free.  (And that was all it showed: this was before such networks decided to produce original programming and cover live sporting events like boxing and MMA.)  That was about ten years after its theatrical release; for those of my era, who grew up very much in the shadow of the boomers and their culture, it felt like a real doorway into that world.  And at the time, I preferred that world to the one I was currently living in.  (I tended to avoid the John Hughes films at that time, though there were exceptions, and even as my kids now love The Breakfast Club and Ferris Beuller's Day Off, I must caution them that that's not how it was then.)  My eldest does see herself as a misfit, but I hope she can see the light at the other side of this tunnel of adolescent angst. And in the wake of my friend's death, it seemed somehow fitting that I would have been thinking of this film and its celebration of life just before finding out about the loss of one who really did live.

Maude is a Holocaust survivor; witness the tattoo on her arm.  She had everything taken from her, and perhaps that's why she "borrows" people's cars and takes a tree from a public building and give it more room to breathe by re-planting it in a field.  Some psychologists refer to two broad types of Holocaust survivors: those who did not die and those who lived.  The former were unable to fully get past those traumas, but the latter somehow managed to recover their spirit and would not give into the misery and evil they suffered.  Maude clearly is someone who lived.  And I want my eldest to understand that.

That said, she's still bummed at what Harold did to the Jaguar-hearse at the end of the film...

Note: I'm not the only one who sees this film's influence on Anderson.  It's pretty obvious, I suppose, but I hadn't seen Asbhy's film in ages, and it just struck me.