Films can make you feel a wide variety of emotions. They can make you laugh, cry, get angry, and make you feel completely and fully fantastic when they do it right. It’s rare to get a film that not only takes you by surprise, but also lightens your mood to the point of pure joy. Just being happy with living and being alive. It’s a difficult thing to quantify, because it’s different with every person. But when an emotional reaction that strong is there, it’s impossible to ignore or look at the movie in a different way. You have to talk about it how you feel, and I feel that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a film that encapsulates everything I have just described.
Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) is a daydreamer. A compulsive daydreamer. So much so that he will ‘zone-out’ during conversations with people. Working at a struggling magazine who are being taken over and being turned into a website, Walter discovers that the negative sent to him by the reclusive photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn) that is meant to be the cover of the final issue is missing, and O’Connell’s last known location is in Greenland. Mindful of his recent discovery that he’s never really done anything adventurous or interesting with his life, Walter sets out to find O’Connell and the missing negative before the final issue goes to print.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is an odd film to watch, mostly because it’s plainly obvious that Ben Stiller, who also directs really wanted to make it. It’s not like watching Transformers where you feel that this was designed by a committee to make money and nothing else, this is like watching a movie by someone who loved the story and wanted to see it on screen. The development hell story is a certainly interesting one, but the way that decades of work could actually produce something good, let alone this good, is astonishing. Serious effort has been put into this film, and every second is on show.
Like I said before, it’s hard to quantify what makes Walter Mitty so good. It just sort of provokes a reaction that is completely subjective. Objectively, it’s still a great film, with the performances being stellar, particularly Sean Penn in his small but very memorable role, and even Ben Stiller, pulling out a surprisingly dramatic turn.
I suppose what makes this better than some of the other ‘just do it’ films is that Walter Mitty as a character is so likeable. He doesn’t whine about his problems or pretend that they’re the most earth-shatteringly terrible things that could ever happen, because they aren’t. It’s a small, personal story and it treats it that way. He sees that his life is somewhat empty and does something about it. He takes charge and changes the things in his life he doesn’t like. And even by the end, he just seems like a happier person, not some enlightened messiah who known the secret to making life work. He changes, but not out of nowhere. You can see where his character growth came from, and the seeds are planted in various subtle ways. It’s a great character study.
The problem with reviewing a film like this is that I don’t really know the best way to go about it. Technically there are plot contrivances and things that don’t happen as they would in real life, but it’s the kind of movie that made me think “actually, I don’t care.” It’s not a film that I don’t see flaws in, it’s a film I love despite the flaws I see in it. They don’t get in the way or hinder the experience, because the rest of it is so engaging. Walter Mitty just made me feel good and happy, which is something Hollywood seems to think is beneath them these days, where everything has to be dark or edgy. But sometimes, optimism can shine through in a sea of cynicism. Maybe I’m processing it too much through my emotions. Maybe I’m being blinded by it’s manipulation. Even if it is manipulation, it’s done so well that I can’t help but get swept up in it.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty will make you want to climb the Himalayas and jump into the ocean from a helicopter, fight a shark and see a snow leopard, and everything in between. It’s a marvel of storytelling that lightens your mood and makes you feel fantastic and it will stay with you for a long, long time. The last must-see film of the year.
