Why does Harold visit funerals?

I think because he feels he can relate to the deceased, like Maude side, 'a lot of people enjoy being dead, but they're not really dead, they're just hiding from life', as he was.

Harold's obsession with death had a lot of reasons, as some have mentioned one of the reasons was to grab his mother's attention for the only time she showed true loving affection and emotion for him was when she thought he had died, other is because he could relate with people who were dead mainly because he felt he was also dead.

The point where he saw his mother's reaction probably made him realise that he was more appreciated by her when he was dead, but let's take a moment and think about the scene where his mother is answering the questions for the Online Dating for him, she doesn't know anything about him and doesn't even bother to aknowledge his existence on this even though it's his life. She simply answers as herself which in my opinion showed me he never truly lived because he was, as Maude in one scene mentions "caged", trapped in a cage where his life was being dictated by his mother.

I have an interpretation that says when he finally saw an actual emotion from his mother he started rebelling against not just her but life itself because he felt like there was no point in living since no one seemed to care about him, I bet even before his obsession with death he was already weird, unsocial and a quiet person especially when someone is controlling his life - Not bashing his mother, she seemed to truly care for him but was more concerned about her life with him around rather than his own life.

Harold was trapped in a life that didn't belong to his, he had no control over whatsoever until he discovered he could "die" over and over and over and experience his mother's reaction until she stopped caring. At which point he seemed to just prefer the experience of dying because it was part of his life and probably the major thing he could take control of. Also because he liked the feeling of being "dead"

You could argue that he had control over his life, as he had his own car and went out a lot of times for the funerals and so on... but I think this was after the constant "killing himself" which enfatuaded his mother and she began to stop caring even more but still control his life only not to the point of what she did before finding out about his "death"

Just my interpretation though :)

The key scene in the film is when Harold breaks down and sobs while relating how his mother reacted to hearing that he had been killed in a lab explosion. She responded in a stagy manner, that is to say, it was a performance without any true feeling to it. When Harold saw this, he knew she didn't love him, or at least, couldn't express it, and Harold became grief stricken because of it, as evinced by him sobbing when he recollected the moment. Those suicide performances, initially, were probably attempts to break through to her feelings, which he failed to do. Later, we see that these performances became more passive aggressively directed at her.

And so, he probably went to funerals to be around genuine grief so as to numb his own. Watching buildings be demolished is also sort of sad, especially in cities where there are usually nothing wrong with the buildings, they're just torn down to make room for something newer.

Mind you, this is just some psychological opinion as it wasn't clarified in the film but it works for me in gaining some understanding.


"Bemusement, my favourite form of musement"