On Changeling and Springing.

Two weeks ago, when the basement in which I was languishing was becoming unusually cold, dark, and damp even by the standards of basements to which I’m normally accustomed, I started watching a film called Changeling.

I didn’t get very far. At the 23 minute point it was becoming blatantly obvious that the film was going to be about corrupt cops in the LAPD doing their level best to put a poor grieving mother through mental hell, at which point my brain rebelled and refused to have any further darkness heaped upon its already beleaguered self. So I turned it off.

But tonight, since the clouds were a little lighter and I had nothing better to do, I decided to gird up the old loins (and my God, don’t they know they’re old these days) and make a valiant attempt to watch the whole thing through. In a way I was glad I did because, for all the harrowing horror contained therein, it was a powerful and well made piece of cinema. Until the end, or more precisely the final three lines of script:

‘Now I have something I didn’t have before.’

‘What’s that, Mrs Collins?’

‘Hope.’

You’d have to know the context to understand why I think it was possibly the dumbest line of any I’ve ever heard in any film at any time in my life, but I can’t be bothered to explain. Suffice it say that films are a bit like musical compositions: get the beginning and end right and you can get away with the odd lapse in the middle. This one failed the test. What on earth was Clint Eastwood thinking that he should have allowed such a travesty? Or maybe he just wasn’t thinking.

*  *  *

But on a brighter note, today was The Day. I’ve mentioned this phenomenon before, but I do feel that it bears reprising once a year. (It’s only once a year, Mr Scrooge. Humbug.)

There’s a day around this time every year which is quite magical. It’s the first day on which you can go out to do something in the garden without putting a coat on first. The air is mild and calm, the sun is shining its beneficence from a mixed sky of azure and light cloud, and the feeling of spring in the air puts a delightful spring in the step (although the latter is not quite true in my case because any spring I used to have in my step has now gone the way of the dodo.) But no matter; today was The Day and grateful I surely was.