Monday, July 24, 2023

Review of Secret Life of Walter Mitty (SLWM - 2013)


Ben Stiller in SLWM vs. Zoolander vs. meeting with Zelenskyy or anyone’s Parents vs. spending Night as Security officer in the Museum or being an actor in Tropic Thunder vs. teaching tennis lessons to Kyrgios (satire); the Walter Mitty & his dream machine amongst all would remain in your thoughts for a long time. The scene imitating the curious case of benjamin button was truly amusing. And it isn’t easy to direct story of a simple man with so much of depth, vibrance, richness, colorful, painted with impeccable scenic views!  How Hans Zimmer transformed the aesthetics of any movie, be it MI2 (the best M.I. flick of its franchise) or Inception or Interstellar & many more; the composers of SLWM at least to some extent, have done the same favor to it.

Whether entire flick is a dream or Walter truly is in on an expedition of his life, finding the negative roll, what the character Sean O’Connell sent to his company, to be published as cover page for its last print edition, as the company been acquired to become fully digital, & being the negative asset manager, Walter thinks he somehow lost that important roll, & commence on a journey to find Sean from the clues he sent, & help of Cheryl (his coworker & whom he admires a lot & in secret even tries to connect her via eHarmony portal) to know about the roll; from Greenland to Iceland to Afghan mountains; amidst the space oddity song wherein Walter jumps into the helicopter; is much more than mere heartwarming & heartening.

There’s a saying that when tragedy crosses the limit, it becomes a comedy. The SLWM has tried to balance it by swaying in between the two. Walter merely thinks in terms of what ought to have been done in his dream machine, eventually embracing the present & moving forward with the simulated real. He can’t change what needs to be changed, except by zooming out of the present, for a change!

Worth a watch!

© Pranav Chaturvedi 

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