Another Week: Number 133

We’ve reached the peak of our annual ride around the sun. The fireworks have subsided, and the days are getting slightly shorter. Inertia has replaced momentum, and our car is creakily inching forward before tipping down into the long plunge toward school, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

There’s a sense of hiding out. You sneak in outdoor activities where you can, dodging steamy afternoons and capricious thunderstorms.

I got a haircut. I turned 65 at home, alone. I watched some Cubs baseball, some women’s basketball, and some women’s tennis at Wimbledon. My mom was excited to learn that the Polish girl, Iga Świątek, won the championship, and we watched the trophy ceremony via her cloud DVD.

I walked 3.0 miles this week. The power outage Saturday night lasted 4 hours and 7 minutes.

National Velvet (1944)

My mom likes TCM movies and horses, so Saturday evening we watched National Velvet, the 1944 Technicolor adaptation starring a 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney, a month before his induction into World War II.

Taylor is cute, Rooney is miserable, and the story is rickety. Taylor’s mother — played by Anne Revere — is a former English Channel swimmer who seems to believe it’s fine for a female to pursue grand aspirations in her youth, as long as she then locks them away and withdraws into modest motherhood.

The film is set in Sussex, England, but filmed in Pebble Beach, California. A horse, “Pie,” and horse-savvy Rooney (“Mi”) come into the girl’s life simultaneously, and before long Velvet wants to enter the horse in the Grand National.

The whole outing is excruciating. Taylor’s enthusiasm quickly becomes annoying. Rooney’s dysfunction is off-putting. There’s not enough of the horse — but the climactic steeplechase goes on forever at a frustrating distance. The outcome is a jumble.

I have no idea why this film is generally beloved.