I have seen Harold and Maude

A gabillion times but I watched it tonight just to see what it looks like now and, more importantly, to see all the ways Rushmore stole from it.

What really makes this sequence golden is Cort's sheepish glance at his Mum after this direct look at the camera.

And, boie, does Rushmore owe a serious debt to it.  The cemetery scenes, the leather chair psychiatrist shots, the massive tree shots (in Rushmore Bill Murray pulls a branch off and the tree falls down), the Cat Stevens music, the "different" young man in love with an older woman, and of course, Wes Anderson stole Bud Cort's furtive glance in to the camera in The Life Aquatic straight from Harold, as well, etc, ...

But Harold and Maude has been an inverted bell curve with me.  I was knocked out with the film years ago but started to hate it after that.  (Perhaps that was just an idiosyncratic thing, a woman I loved was besotted with the film which made me hate it all the more, espec after we broke up.)

I watched Rushmore with a friend, really expecting him to love the film as I do.  I thought it was right up his alley.  He shrugged it off, did not get it, and that is okay.  Meanwhile, it was then I started to notice all the Harold and Maude allusions.  I watched Harold and Maude soon after that (this was around 2001) and enjoyed it but not nearly as much as I enjoyed it tonight.

I think Harold and Maude is aging v well, silently, alone in the cellar whilst everyone has written it off.  Harold and Maude's anachronistic ways, it's most certainly set in the US and there are clues to spell that out, yet, that is no United States that I know (and what is up w/ Mum having an English accent?) This anachronistic style of writing, designing, and shooting is a tool in Wes Anderson's box, i.e. Rushmore's ambiguous time-setting.

There are serious flaws in Harold and Maude, though.  The "falling in love" montage of scenes is poorly edited (Hal Ashby's strong point!) and v stilted to say the least.

Still, I loved it tonight.  It is still not up there with my all-time cult films.  Those would be This is Spinal Tap, Withnail and I, and In the Loop.  But it is still v good and deserves a second look if you have not seen it in a while.

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Saw Of Gods and Men yesterday.  I loved it, loved it, but it is hard to recommend a movie that is two hours long and feels twice that.  Of course it is glacially paced, it is a film about monks.  Still, it was v moving and absolutely pitch perfect to its' real-life subject matter.  It looks like old religious paintings, the compositions are meticulous and spot-on.  The birthday scene with the Muslims is ebullient, the "Swan Lake" scene is earthquakingly moving and the way each monk has their own character perfectly spelled out and shown is quite beautiful.

I guess I am recommending it, after all.

Love you all, Mwah!, ...