If You Want to Be Free, Be Free...

Sissy Jen had never seen Harold & Maude before. Her boyfriend gave her the DVD for Christmas, but it was only last night, after dinner, that she got to experience "Harolding" and "Maudism"1 in its full glory. In the bedroom scene, when Harold is contentedly blowing bubbles, Sissy Jen said "this has to be the trippiest movie I ever saw."

To me, the film grows with each viewing. It's now in my top 10 favourites (as it must be with most people who have seen it); and it's become one of the few films that make me cry through it (the others being Central Station and Buena Vista Social Club). I'm unstable like that.

I realized for the first time how much Wes Anderson's career rests on Hal Ashby's work, including his soundtrack and stylistic choices. The use of portraits in the background, in H & M, is very similar to The Royal Tenenbaums; there's Cat Steven's song "If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out" which Anderson has used somewhere or other; and Bud Cort even plays a part in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. I'd love to hear one day that Cat Steven's song played by a busker in the underground.

1. I personally prefer to call it WWMD? (What Would Maude Do?), which a high school friend and I came up with after I saw the film for the first time. E.g. Would Maude spend a beautiful Sunday indoors, playing videogames? Hell, she would!