The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty - Blog Posts
To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, to draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) dir. Ben Stiller
The Secret Life of ME
Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) got some harsh reviews on accounts of being a cliché and of praising the sort of life that only a substantial amount of money can make possible. Some critics even say they'll graciously overlook these because Ben Stiller's just not that profound and we like him for his unique and entertaining humor, not his abstract thoughts. I watched the movie today and I was blown away.
I had quite low expectations because of the reasons above, and my intention was simply to watch something light and to relax. It was light, yes, and it was relaxing, true, but it wasn't at all as superficial as some say.
The title character, Walter Mitty, is a guy, who, after his father's death, became a responsible adult, who had to put aside his dreams and desires, in order to provide for his family and himself. He lived a life, where adventure existed only in the form of fantasies and daydreams. The movie is about his brave moves of going out to the wild and exotic parts of the world.
I admit, even in my brief summary it sounds like a cliché. However, what makes this movie extraordinary is there, among those lines. It's not the story of a man, who's just a little gray piece of paper (even one of the characters says that he imagined him as that) but someone with a past, with hopes and dreams and abilities. I can't stress abilities enough because that's a crucial point in Walter Mitty's greatness. He does the things that he can actually do and not the impossible. In an early scene we see him perform cool skateboard tricks and that's him, not his imagination, him. Now I'm not saying that someone has to be able-bodied or some such thing to live a good life. My point is that this story shows us a guy, who's coming from somewhere and goes on doing amazing things that he's had the potential to do all along. If he's an athletic guy, then it's a good thing he does things that require that.
Another important element of his character is that he wants to travel. You can say that everybody likes traveling and it's their financial states that prevent them from going to see the world. However, this is a misconception. I see people around me everyday, who say they wish they could go abroad and see this and that part of the world but in reality, they're afraid of people, who don't speak their language, they're uncomfortable with hiking, they hate spontaneity and so on and so forth. If pricey hotels with fancy rooms and fluent English concierges is what you want, then that's actually achievable almost exclusively through spending a fortune on it. If you want to see nice landscapes but only without breaking a sweat, here's tumblr, where there are endless photos that you'll be happy with and that's that. But if you're one of the few adventurous people out there, willing to jump in the ice-cold ocean, then you can do that on very little money.
My point with these is that looking at the events in the movie very specifically will make you say that yeah, it's pretty cool but no one can actually do that. But those specific events would take place in the life of that very specific Walter Mitty.
This movie is about the lifestyle that our generation has forgotten but even a hundred years ago it was the prevailing idea. And I remember that when I was seventeen I wanted to be a journalist and travel to the Sahara and climb the Mount Everest. I know, from my own experience, that abandoning these dreams won't erase them from the fabric of my mind, only I can oppress them with the new idea of life. But it's wrong. It's so wrong actually that my fear or reluctance to realize at least some of them has resulted in having me now with a poor heart, probably incapable of climbing the Everest but at the same time, a heart that's aching to do it.
My conclusion is that not all of us are adventurers or journalists and we shouldn't try to be the things we can't be, so it's not necessary to pretend we're Walter Mitty. However, figuratively, our generation's father died and we've become responsible. But it wouldn't be irresponsible to stop playing it safe and stop living petty lives. We complain a lot and believe all the crazy-labels that are put on all sorts of awesome things and I think these two things are on the top ten list of things that are wrong with people of this era. Let's try to change that.