The movie, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty

To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life”.- Walter Mitty (Movie).

Life is about finding yourself, each other, and being true to one’s self. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is an extremely original and creative story written by James Thurber. The movie, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, starring Ben Stiller, conveys a daydreamer escaping his typical life by disappearing into a realm of fantasies filled with heroism, romance and action. In both the movie and the book, the title character retreats into fantasy as an escape from his mundane reality because in the real world, he is ordinary, insecure, and passive. In the short story, Walter simply retreats into his daydreams and tolerates his domineering wife, while in the movie he actively pursues finding himself.

Walter Mitty, a timid, passive, henpecked husband, embarrassingly incompetent at ordinary tasks, constantly falls into daydreams in which he assumes such heroic roles as flying through a storm, shooting down German aircraft, and performing delicate surgery. The story begins with a Commander trying to get an "eight-engine Navy hydroplane" through a storm (Thurber). The commander, brave tries to take control of his crew, shouted, “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engine Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. “The Old Man’ll get us through,” they said to one another. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of Hell!” (Thurber). Mrs. Mitty stops this fantasy when she says, “Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast for?”. One can infer from this moment that Walter is hav...

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... that same rhythm throughout. Whereas in the movie, his fantasies play in active role of pursuing his quest of finding the missing negative for the last Times magazine edition- or he loses his job. Furthermore, the movie takes the book another step farther by having Walter eventually living these immensely wild fantasies, on his journey to Greenland, when he finds Sean.

Although it toys with the visually fascinating concept of dreams and their possibilities in ordinary life, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" seldom explores the theme with the imagination it deserves. Walter's search, the mysteries he must solve, the completely unsurprising pat ending, and the tiresomely predictable love between him and Cheryl simply overwhelm the notion of the dream life and its connections to what we like to regard as real life, that endlessly fascinating subject for the cinema.