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There’s just a teensy bit of January left, and I’ve got a couple more movies with positive vibes about new beginnings and fresh starts to help blunt the new-year blues.
Today: 2013’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It bears little resemblance to the 1939 James Thurber short story or the 1947 film of the same name, so put those out of your mind (if you’re of the vanishing breed of film fan who knows who Thurber is and has seen any movie prior to 1999).
This is an airy fairy tale, buoyed by an infectious joy, about a Life magazine photo editor (Ben Stiller, who also directed) who goes on an out-of-his-comfort-zone adventure — the kind he has always dreamed about! — in search of a missing negative (so retro!) from the magazine’s star photographer. Perhaps the aspect that makes this story both incredibly powerful and uniquely poignant is that Stiller’s Walter embarks on this daring exploit just as he’s about to lose his job: the magazine is shutting down. (The real Life magazine had long since been shuttered at this point, sadly.) So, like, why even bother… except that he now has little to lose, and everything to gain, because he’s been forced into change. Which he embraces exuberantly.
I haven’t seen this film since it was new, and now I wonder if it might be a good fit for my Movies for the Resistance, in that it’s very much about prioritizing your integrity even while you’re surrounded by assholes who are enabling the collapse of the world around you. Because the very modern, bittersweetly pragmatic ache that comes with maintaining your soul under trying circumstances is all over this wonderful, gentle movie.
To be revisited, perhaps…
US: rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: stream on Disney+; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
See The Secret Life of Walter Mitty at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
