It’s easy to get caught up in how silly or cliché those things might appear, but then, you’re probably still getting caught up in the images themselves, instead of thinking about what the images might be saying, like working at Life magazine but not living life and that’s the genius of the film: it’s not asking you to be so caught up in it that you aren’t reflecting back on your own life. That’s the beauty of the film’s excesses. This new life Walter embraces is something fantastical, something that probably only happens in the movies―jumping in and out of helicopters to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, swimming (and fighting) with CGI sharks, hiking the Himalayas to meet Sean Penn ―but isn’t that why we go to the movies in the first place? To see things that you can’t see in real life? You’ll probably never do most of those things, and the film isn’t asking you to, to live out some movie’s idea of the fullest possible life lived but it is asking you to go talk to that girl or boy that you like it is asking you to put yourself out into the world it is asking you to be responsible for yourself and for your life. Related article: April Movies Release Schedule: The Most Accurate List of Every Movie Coming Out in April – Live Updates Related article: The Complete List of 2021 Oscar Nominations – Celebrations, Surprises & Snubs | The Show Must Go On It’s not until Walter must choose (and it’s him that must choose) to bring those images to life, literally, that he opens himself up to life, that he chooses life, and what a life there is to be lived!
Walter Mitty is a character stuck between the imaginary and the real, like many of us, daydreaming about the life photographed within the negatives he processes for Life magazine―an adventurous life, a life of heroics and love and love―but, like most of us, Walter doesn’t live the life he dreams about, choosing instead to look at the woman he loves rather than talk to her, choosing to dream about the life staring right at him in the images he processes. While something can be said for having a rich fantasy life, there’s always something about those fantasies that want so badly to be, and it’s this desire to be, ultimately, that opens us up to the beauty of things and people and the world, an oceanic movement from the imaginary to the real, a movement beautifully expressed by Ben Stiller’s ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’. Daydream, daydream, O to live life inside a daydream! Then again, most of us already find ourselves there: in make-believe worlds, wanting, always wanting.
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