Review of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) by Blake L — 18 Mar 2018

The movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty shows a man named Walter Mitty that works at Life Magazine as a negative asset manager. A famous photographer Sean O'Connell sends Walter a film roll. The particular negative that Sean wants him to publish is missing. The rest of the movie entails Walter traveling around the world to find the picture, but through this Walter finds adventure in his life. The Director Ben Stiller, is telling us to find adventure in our lives. He accomplishes this through the way the character Walter Mitty acts, the cinematography and through Ben Stiller being the director, main role actor and producer.

The character Walter Mitty is peculiar but is relatable to all of us. Walter is a daydreamer and discovers throughout the whole movie that the thing he has been missing is adventure. In Ann Hornaday's review, she describes Walter Mitty by saying, "Stiller brings his jut-jawed, laser-blue glare to a character who starts off as something of a passive cipher." She describes him as reserved but at the same time, she described him as an outgoing type of character. She also is describing Stiller's performance as extremely well. Walter isn't a normal movie character in that case. Throughout the movie, Ben Stiller really shows off his acting skills with how the character acts in certain situations.

The cinematography is nothing but jaw-dropping in Walter Mitty and makes the theme really pop. At the beginning the camera movement is very rigid but as the movie goes on and Walter finds adventure in his life the camera loosens up. This proves the overall theme of the movie which is finding adventure in our lives. Our lives may be rigid but as we go have adventure and live life to the fullest our camera loosens up. Robledo, S. Jhoanna says "See this film for the cinematography, which frames nearly every shot like a perfectly composed photograph of the likes you'd see in, say, Life magazine, where Walter works in the movie." Robledo states that every person should go see it because every shot is like a perfect photo. Every moment in the movie you could take a picture of and have it be an exquisite masterpiece. If you watch the camera movement you can see that each shot is particularly planned.

Ben Stiller as the director, main role, and producer makes the movie's theme very easy to spot. During the movie, it is very easily illustrated that Ben Stiller wants you to find adventure because the majority of the movie is made by him. Ben Stiller himself says "The whole idea was Walters living in a, ya know the world he's in is sort of rigid and not as full and not as free." He knows exactly what he wanted in this sentence, in particular, he's talking about Walter's daydreams which gives you a little burst of what the theme is. It is easy to find what a director, producer and, main role actor wanted you to get out of the film when they are a big chunk of the movie.

On the other hand, some people say that the movie has too much propaganda. This point of view makes sense because of A. O. Scott says "And quite a lot of corporate propaganda too, for Papa John's Pizza, Cinnabon, and eHarmony, the online dating site represented by the irreverent, just-a-regular-guy-like-you presence of Patton Oswalt." Throughout the movie, you see these companies and they are kinda a big part of the plot so it's not just background propaganda. However, it is propaganda that doesn't shove it in your brain that you need to do this. It's more companies that make the movie that you just filter out in your mind and doesn't seem to attack you. Therefore, it doesn't matter that there is "Propaganda" in the movie.

The movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty encourages the idea to find color in our lives. The whole purpose of this movie unfolds as we watch Walter's dull life change into an adventurous one. The cinematography adds to the central theme because the beauty of the different shots make the audience yearn for more. Ben Stiller was able to keep great congruence with his theme of finding purpose in our lives because he was not only the central actor but also the director and producer which wraps his mind and purpose into one.