Movie Review
The Secret Life of
Walter Mitty
Duration: 2hrs 5mins.
IMDB Rating: 7.3/10
Released: 2013
T
he Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a film released in 2013 starring
Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott, Shirley MacLaine and Sean
Penn. The film was directed by Ben Stiller. The screenplay was written
by Steve Conrad and its based on a short story of the same title by
James Thurber.
The film, in a nutshell, is about daydreaming, love, courage and
relationships. It starts off giving us, the viewers, a glimpse into the
life of Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller), a negative assets manager at Life
Magazine. Walter is depicted as a regular joe who shows up for work,
does as he is told and keeps his opinions to himself; shy, introverted.
The story marginally focuses on the advent of the digital age of
publication and the pretentiousness of business school-type managers.
This is very interestingly represented in the first few moments of the
film itself. Announcing an imminent takeover the publishers of Life
Magazine decide to roll out one final issue of the magazine and at
cover would be a photograph, titled ‘Quintessence’, captured by the
celebrated photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn).
In a somewhat predictable turn of events Walter happens to have every
other image on the negative handed to him except ‘Quintessence’.
Management pressurises him and Walter, lost for words osmotically
finds himself drawing ideas to propel him to retrieve ‘Quintessence’. In
a typical Hollywood storytelling move, Walter has a workplace crush,
to go on an adventure to find Sean and retrieve ‘Quintessence’. This is
the first major plot point.
Walter sets off on this insane adventure by riding a personal helicopter
whose driver was drunk (huh?). To calm himself, he transports himself
into a world where Cheryl’s rendition of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’
was the saving grace.
He finds himself in Greenland and goes through a live demo of what
the dreams of his life might be like. But unfortunately, it was, gloomy,
unproductive, and impersonal at best. He applies his Sherlockian logic
again and discovers another clue pertaining to Sean’s location in a
wrapper (yes, really). The wrapper points Walter to a nearby volcano
and guess what ? The volcano erupts.
He had failed. He returns to New York, unsuccessful in retrieving the
‘Quintessence’. He is fired from his job at Life Magazine and it turns
out Cheryl has moved back in with her once estranged husband.
Broken and marred, Walter goes and visits his mother. It turns out she
did know about Sean’s whereabouts and he had visited her in the recent
past. He tracks down Sean who is busy in the Himalayas capturing a
photograph whose subject is a rare snow leopard.
It turns out ‘Quintessence’ had been with Walter all along. He just
hadn’t looked at it yet. Walter returns to Life Magazine and submits
the negative. He is berated but in a pretty obvious turn of events the
business school educated manager takes Walter’s side and admonishes
the acquisition manager for humiliating the manager. He and Cheryl,
pretty randomly, get back together.
On the whole, the film was visually solid and well directed. The
plot wasn’t so great, it could’ve been more solid and the character
development, unfortunately, was sub-par. Kristen Wiig played her part
wonderfully and so did Ben Stiller. Sean Penn got into the meat of the
character as always and was as real as a real photographer gets. Adam
Scott was a terribly designed character and his psuedo-intellectual
beard was huge turnoff.
the charming and bubbly, Cheryl Melhoff (Kristen Wiig). The thing is that the film is pretty predictable and by the end you
might even be able to preempt in which way the story might move in.
The flow of the story and the lack of thought that went the character
design were its weak spots. The acting, editing and direction were
the hallmarks that made the film a worthwhile movie-watching
experience.
Applying Sherlockian logic, Walter is apparently able to pinpoint
the location of Sean (pretty far out stuff, but this is a film about
imagination, so I let that bit slide). To balance his intensely boring
life, Walter happens to have a highly developed sense of imagination. The film will have factions who believe that as an experience it was
great and ones who believe it was a terribly random film. At the end
of the day its you who has to decide which end of the spectrum you
belong. Watch it and take a stand.
Credit to Ben Stiller for managing to capture stunning visuals of a
man who dreams alternate lives, events and abilities. These imaginings
might have been very rapid and vivid, but all of us venture into this
zone of daydreams (although not as intense), but its a direct result of
the film really capturing a fundamental facet of the human experience.
Walter stalls Management’s frequent inquiry and decides that it is time
Vignesh Swaminathan
[email protected]
Vignesh Swaminathan is a Product Designer by
training. His interests include watching films, Artificial
Intelligence, football and reading non-fiction books.
Vignesh supports Arsenal FC.