The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) is a movie about Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller), a negative asset manager at the prominent magazine called “LIFE”. One day he receives a roll of film from Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn), one of his photography contacts who is traveling around the world shooting photos for the new issues. The film roll contains what will be the cover photo of the last edition of the magazine ever to be produced. The problem? That single photo is missing from the roll. With the help of colleague Cheryl Melhoff (Kristen Wiig), he is on track to finding Sean and recovering that missing photo. On the journey however, he finds himself.

The movie is loosely based on a short story with the same name by James Thurber, published in The New Yorker in 1939. While the main story in the movie shares no real resemblance with the short story, this is where the concept of Walter’s excessive day-dreaming episodes for something other than the ordinary stems from.

The story itself may leave some people dissatisfied, the excellent soundtrack featuring José González and the epic and equally stunning visuals will leave no-one unaffected. They work together to create a truly magical movie experience. I can only compare the feeling in this movie to that in Lost in Translation, and it has become a movie I keep returning to — a work of art.

Score: 9/10 (Superb)

Originally published at johnny.chadda.se on August 17, 2015.