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Home Feature

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Olly Buxton by Olly Buxton
April 11, 2020
in Feature, Film Review
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
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Ben Stiller’s Walter Mitty of 2013 has a passing resemblance to Danny Kaye’s of 1947, and none at all to James Thurber’s original creation (in which a hen-pecked husband, who inhabits a short story about five pages long, is sent out to buy overshoes and dog biscuits while his wife has her hair done).

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So those professional critics who complain (and some have) that Stiller doesn’t capture Thurber’s nuanced social commentary are talking through their hat. Especially since Stiller delivers an extremely nuanced social commentary!

Nor, as far as I know, did Thurber leave behind Tolkienesque appendices of the sort that might underpin the two hour roller coaster on show, a story of derring-do, adversity and high-jinks only matched by the development trajectory of this script. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, in its decade-long passage through the hands of agents, writers, producers, studios and directors, also was dunked in the arctic ocean, shot at by Afghan warlords and abandoned in Himalayan wastelands before falling for its final release into the watchful and loving arms of Ben Stiller who found himself not only leading the cast but directing the film as well.

 

Usually films with this sort of midwifery are a disaster. This one’s a peach. I’m inclined to give Stiller much of the credit, though I dare say Steve Conrad’s screenplay didn’t write itself.

On a big screen, it is absolutely stunning. This is what Hollywood blockbusters should be like: imaginative, inventive, engaging, beautiful, sweeping, clever, well observed, well acted, and fun. Stiller demonstrates himself to be not just a far subtler comic than many of his peers (Jim Carey was associated with this picture at one point) but an outstanding actor: his transition from biro-pocketed nerd in the basement film archive to swashbuckling global explorer is a joy to behold, and for a little guy with sticky-outy ears, he is a surprisingly credible leading man. He has real chemistry with the ever-dependable Kirsten Wiig.

 

Walter Mitty is made by, features, and speaks to the people of a certain demographic: mid 40s toilers who spend their private moments aghast that their lives are slipping away unremarked-upon and their public ones putting on brave faces and avoiding the inevitable conclusion that their toils might all be for naught.

This film counsels not just seizure of the day, but also, comfortingly, that it hasn’t been in vain: the truly beautiful, as Sean Penn remarks, don’t need to show themselves off.

Ironically, Walter Mitty learns of his own beauty only when he finally flees his gilded cage. Only. Once he really has leapt from a helicopter into shark-infested water, does he realise his life hasn’t been wasted after all. (Special mention, by the way, to that Icelandic bear of a man Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, here the drunken chopper pilot, whose extraordinary performance in the recent Icelandic feature The Deep has to be seen to be believed).

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty6

Those not old enough to have yet acquired the humility to doubt their place in the firmament may find this all a little bit self-involved, but there will a big constituency among the rest of us who will find this film hits its mark. It is relentlessly big and beautiful: Stuart Dryburgh’s sparkling cinematography deserves as big a screen as you can find to see it on, and those receptive to its message will sit there for two hours with a big, dumb grin on their faces.

 

Director: Ben Stiller
Stars: Ben Stiller, Kirsten Wiig, Shirley MacLaine, Kathryn Hahn, Adam Scott, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Adrian Martinez, Sean Penn, Iceland, Greenland, Afghan Himalayas
Running Time: 114
Country: USA

Film Rating: ★★★★½

Tags: Adrian MartinezAfghanistanBen Stillerdanny kayeDjúpiðGreenlandHimalayasicelandJames Thurberkathryn hahnKirsten WiigÓlafur Darri ÓlafssonSEAN PENNSteve ConradWalter Mitty
Olly Buxton

Olly Buxton

Olly lives amongst the lush olive groves and cypress trees on the slopes of Mount Muswell, just north of London, where he has a thirty five acre lifestyle orchard and farm with lifetime partner Bridget and their small ('but growing!') herd of alpacas. When he's not darting around the corniches of Hamstead and Highgate on his convertible BSA motorcycle ('it's more of a cabriolet, really') or tasting his latest batch of extra virgin oil with the orchard's head oliculturalist, Ned, Olly researches for his forthcoming novel, a science fiction fantasy in which, courtesy of a time machine, it is David Bowie and not namesake Jim who is left to defend the Alamo from the siege of the Mexican Army. A committed Radical Marxist Ironist, Olly made his fortune during the world-wide anti-capitalist riots of 1999 on the back of the simple but ingenious idea: selling packed lunches and bottles of diet coke to hungry protesters at a huge mark-up. "FeedtheCommie.com", as he styled his fledgling business, quickly became an enormously profitable multinational operation, quenching thirsts and filling bellies of protesters, dissidents, exiles and other militant intellectuals during times of civil unrest and civil protest in thirty six countries around the globe, from its headquarters in Seattle. The company also secured lucrative sponsorship deals with (among others) Amnesty International, Greenpeace and the Socialist Workers' Party. Olly then consolidated his net worth by securitising the income streams from FeedtheCommie.Com, negotiating a successful IPO and selling his entire holding ('mostly to student Marxist Radicals I had befriended, I would point out') at the top of the market. As of its public debut, FeedtheCommie.com is yet to make any revenue and is currently trading at 6 per cent of its par value. Nevertheless, Olly doesn't feel too bad about the sub-class of bankrupt Marxists he has created. "It's what they would have wanted". Now the second richest man in the world, Olly has settled into a life of writing political philosophy, voyaging on journeys of self discovery ('I find something new about myself every day. This morning it was dandruff'), and ceramic painting (pointillism).

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