How do you view the end?


I've always taken it as Harold was done being dead. I never thought about the possibility of him actually being in the Jaguar and his spirit being the one on the hillside playing the banjo. To me, if that were the case, Maude would have been with him.

I don't know. He made the Jaguar to look like a hearse, and it was the last vehicle that he and Maude rode in together (aside from the ambulance). It sort of makes sense that he'd want to get ride of it. Shed that part of himself. To me, Maude helped him have the ability to love and be alive. She wanted him to 'go love some more' so I don't see why he would disobey her last wishes, seeing as how she meant to much to him.

That's just my own personal interpretation, though.

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I've always taken it as Harold was done being dead.


By "done being dead", I presume you mean that Harold has accepted the things he learned from Maude about living life. I agree

I never thought about the possibility of him actually being in the Jaguar and his spirit being the one on the hillside playing the banjo. To me, if that were the case, Maude would have been with him.


This seems to be one of the "fringe ideas" since it does not seem to be suggested by the film or the context in the film. The film has a "red herring" where for a moment the it seems to suggest that he finally decided to not just pretend to be dead, but has actually chosen to be dead. But this moment is brief as the camera pans to the top and we see him alive on the cliff.

I am not sure where anyone gets the idea that it is a ghost or spirit. Nowhere in the film has this supernatural element been introduced (that I have seen), we are not shown the image as rising from the car, insubstantial, with wings, halo or a harp instead of the banjo. Or even showing the ghost of Maude with him.

But some people seem to want a more depressing ending where Maude failed to teach Harold and the ending song is meant to be ironic in some way.

I don't know. He made the Jaguar to look like a hearse, and it was the last vehicle that he and Maude rode in together (aside from the ambulance). It sort of makes sense that he'd want to get ride of it. Shed that part of himself. To me, Maude helped him have the ability to love and be alive. She wanted him to 'go love some more' so I don't see why he would disobey her last wishes, seeing as how she meant to much to him.


That is the conventional interpretation as it depicts what is in the movie.

People have posted many "fringe ideas". In addition to the "dead Harold" idea, there is also the immortal harold, where the chemistry accident gave him superpowers (or he is an alien) and he can not be killed no matter whether he tries to hang himself, drown himself, shoot himself, remove limbs, immolate, or stab himself.

There are even proposals that Maude was a Nazi sympathizer. Personally I prefer to accept what the film proposes and suggests without all the speculation on what the film does not explicitly rule out, even though all those ideas are "possible"...

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Not meaning to take this thread off-topic but this point is too important to go unchallenged.

The "nazi sympathiser" theory misses one crucially important thing. In a shot that lasts perhaps a fraction of a second, easy to miss if you're not watching for it, and I think it's the scene where they're sitting by the sea after the night at the fairground, we see a number tattooed on her arm, shown to us in a close-up that makes it very clear what it is. It is identical to what the nazis did to identify concentration camp prisoners, the ones that weren't killed upon arrival.

One of my school teachers had such a tattoo and I have seen many photos of others like it so I am certain that is what it was meant to be on Maude's arm.

She had been a prisoner of the nazis. I would therefore hotly contest anyone wanting to believe that she could have been a nazi sympathizer.

I will post separately in reply to the main point of this thread.

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I am not sure where anyone gets the idea that it is a ghost or spirit. Nowhere in the film has this supernatural element been introduced (that I have seen), we are not shown the image as rising from the car, insubstantial, with wings, halo or a harp instead of the banjo. Or even showing the ghost of Maude with him.

But some people seem to want a more depressing ending where Maude failed to teach Harold and the ending song is meant to be ironic in some way.


I don't get it either. This interpretation renders the entire film pointless and a waste of time rather than the wonderful masterpiece that it is (and a film I personally love so, so much). But, people are free to see it how they want, I guess.

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I think that the films ending is just as it shows. He sets the car to drive of the cliff. It makes you think for a split second that he has finally done it, but the moment the camera starts to pan up you realise that he is going to be there and that he is alive. When it gets to him you see him looking more alive then he has at any point in the film. Also he is now dressed in a more relaaxed and young manner. Where he was always dressed so smart, he now has his shirt out and is looking cool.

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I think that's a good analysis. The point here is that Harold never cared about the car. I'd say he viewed the car as a symbol of oppression imposed by his mother in her attempts to model his behavior in the way she wants. Harold, as a captive in her home, chopped the car and exercises his death sequences in attempt to undermine his mother's controlling nature. Maude liberates Harold from his mother and in the final scene Harold displays this by rejecting the car.

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exercises his death sequences in attempt to undermine his mother's controlling nature.


I see the "deaths" as completely different. I see him wanting to appear dead to get reaction and see some show of affection from his mother. He describes how his mother reacted to the policeman telling her about his death in the explosion. It seemed to me he wanted to see it again. I presume it worked a bit for the first few, but failed even as they got more elaborate...

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I can see that angle but I think his intent was more about unnerving her.

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I think he both wanted some sympathy from her, and wanted to unnerve her. Because deep down, he was angry at her for failing to be kinder and more sympathetic.

You could see it in the way Harold looked at her, the rapt yet blank look. IMHO he was minutely searching her face for a sign that she cared whether he lived or died. A waste of time, of course, some people just don't show their feelings.

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[–] TooManyFives:
I think that the films ending is just as it shows. He sets the car to drive of the cliff. It makes you think for a split second that he has finally done it, but the moment the camera starts to pan up you realise that he is going to be there and that he is alive. When it gets to him you see him looking more alive then he has at any point in the film. Also he is now dressed in a more relaaxed and young manner. Where he was always dressed so smart, he now has his shirt out and is looking cool.


[–] franklindf
I think that's a good analysis. The point here is that Harold never cared about the car. I'd say he viewed the car as a symbol of oppression imposed by his mother in her attempts to model his behavior in the way she wants. Harold, as a captive in her home, chopped the car and exercises his death sequences in attempt to undermine his mother's controlling nature. Maude liberates Harold from his mother and in the final scene Harold displays this by rejecting the car.


Excellent points! Franklindf, you and TooManyFives have summed up the ending perfectly!

We can't forget that Maude did say that she stole cars to remind people not to get too attached to material possessions (although the ethics in that are debatable).

So Harold's send off to the car at the end feels very appropriate, as a final tribute to the late love of his life.

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Yes! TooManyFives...
Maude freed him.

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When he crashed the car I wasn't sure whether to think it was another fake death for his mother, or more that he's done with obsessing over anything death related. I can't remember exactly what he said to Maude, something like "Jesus Christ Maude, don't die", something like that. It seemed to be kind of like an "oh..right..real death isn't exciting..it isn't enjoyable"

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Precisely!

Who ever thinks Harold died at the end obviously wasn't watching the movie.

Harold never made a single serious attempt at suicide. The reasons why he perpetrated those acts was pretty obvious and have already been explained on this board.

He might have had a morbid fascination with death but that was as far as it went.


~What if this is as good as it gets?!~

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In the film, Harold keeps staging his own realistic, but fake, suicides. At the end he fakes his final one -- but we, the audience, are the ones the trick is pulled for. It is Harold's crowning piece of stagecraft, because for a moment we think he has actually died. But smashing his hearse-like car and skipping away playing the banjo show that he's now done with his death obsession.

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Rebirth- life will and must go on. Harold will move on, hopefully move into his own home, travel, learn, mess around, meet women. All the things Maude knew he should be doing, The car off the cliff was the casting off of shackles of the past, the banjo- hope for the future.

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Just like Rose dumping Jack in the middle of the ocean in Titanic. Dump the baggage and start living.



My "#3" key is broken so I'm putting one here so i can cut & paste with it.

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Thanks, the hot coffee shooting out my nose felt just wonderful!

Excellent message, hilarious delivery.

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A movie so pro living life and the impact she had on him, who was so into death, of course he didn't commit suicide and that it was his spirit playing the banjo. That whole notion just seems stupid to me.

Anyway, I just watched it for the time and can't believe I've never seen it before. What a truly epic film. I had no expectations for the film, except thinking if it was bad I'd just play something else... but wow, what a great film with a really good ending that should be pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain.

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I found it thought provoking in that I was crying when he drove the car off the cliff, thinking that he was really committing suicide; when it was then shown that it was just another fake scenario I thought I was like how he had descibed his mother after the explosion at school, wallowing in cheap emotion rather than engaging with the underlying message. I felt like I should smack myself and say "Well, Duh!"

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Ending has always been clearly about one thing to me.

Harold stages one final fake suicide (ditching the car, and symbolically ditching the old Harold with it) and then gets on with his life in a kind of "seize the day" thing, a changed man.

That's the message that comes through the whole film and imho why it remains a classic. Incredibly uplifting even with its apparent obsession with death.

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