Just to add a bit more to your enticement, Susie--The young man, Harold, played by Bud Cort, comes from an extremely privileged, pampered background, but finds no meaning in his emotionally frigid world, and dwells on thoughts of death and suicide (thus the compulsive visits to strangers' funerals). He is a deliberate thorn to his staid, genteel mother (played superbly by Vivian Pickles), who does her best to ignore all her son's attempts to shock and frighten her. The old woman, Maude, played so memorably by veteran actress Ruth Gordon, is as much in love with life as Harold is with death. She opens his eyes onto different perspectives on the world and its people.
This may all sound quite grim, but the film is actually a charming comedy. There is a great musical soundtrack by Cat Stevens that captures all the gentle allure of the early Seventies counterculture of which this film became an emblem. The screenplay is by Colin Higgins, and the film was directed by Hal Ashby, one of the most interesting directors working in the brave new world that was American cinema in the 1970's.