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| This is original movie poster |
“Stop Dreaming. Start Living” says the advertisement billboard.
I like
Ben Stiller. I find him small-framed but
exquisitely beautiful and well-proportioned and I can imagine his good
looks being a disadvantage in life. I like the impeccable timing of his
jokes and his trademark “sarcastic deadpan disposition”
displayed in many of his roles. In a way, this movie, one that both
features him as a lead and as a director stands in this place of the
time continuum as a lovely milepost in a crossroads of reality and
fiction.
And standing for fiction here is Walter Mitty, but
there is not much fictional in Walter Mitty when regarded from this place in sociocultural milieu of western civilization. In fact,
there are so many Mitties around us today he is
so average he’s boring. Middle-aged, unattached, run-off-the-mill,
conformist, anonymous male, still connected only to the nuclear family
of his origination. This has become so common it is unsavory. In
contrast with Walter Mitty of
Thurber’s original short story, one that invents his secret life to escape the routine of married
middle-age life of accomplished citizen Walter Mitties of today create secret
lives to escape insipidness of their lives of un-accomplishment. As
Killing Time, fellow blogger I follow and enjoy reading has recently summarized:
"I think I'm growing old.
I admit - this sounded quite silly, of course I'm growing old. We all are. What I wanted to say is that I think I'm old already. I do not feel old, but there are indicators I cannot ignore. One of them is that I'm less wise than few years ago. This is the sign of my generation aging. We do not have time to wait fortieth birthday to enter midlife crisis, we want to act like idiots now! And that is not because we feel we haven't experienced enough, just the opposite: we behaved like idiots our whole lives and suddenly we arrived at an age when we should stop. Our version of existential crisis manifests in a decision to continue behaving like idiots. That is also the reason why we cannot afford Maybach or jet-propelled motorbike so we could have bare minimum of style in our living through this premature crisis."
So we watch our Walter going on and on with his existence. Going to work, paying bills, taking care of things, having relationships, connecting with people, being a good person, being a good boss, being a poster employee, accomplishing things... and yet - daydreaming of a different life, of noteworthy life, life of meaning and substance and passion.
Waiting for things to happen not realizing that things are happening already and have been happening all along.
We hear Walter insisting, more than once, that he hasn't really done anything or that he hasn't really been anywhere but just mere minutes later he is describing his life and magnifficent things he accomplished him not even realizing their value. Forever waiting that his life actions are ascribed value from the outside. For world to weigh his endeavors and convince him that he's worthy, but not accepting this judgement if it really happens.
This is the real predicament and disease of Today. In a world where you can easily share your accomplishments with 6 billion people with an action as simple as tweet, reality of the fact:"You are unique, just like everyone else." can easily devalue anything one accomplishes instead of being social adhesive and adding to one's self-worth. So we go through life feeling inadequate and mend the holes in our souls with stupid escapism. Earth continues to revolve and we continue to breathe, to breed, to put one foot in front of the other never seeing the quintessence.
The quintessence.
There is a scene in The Secret Life of Walther Mitty in which he manages to attain unattainable all the while not giving himself credit for what he accomplishes and at the very same time he witnessess somebody else having a moment of simmilar success - but that success being somebody else's accoplishment makes that he easily recognizes it as special and treats it as such. Walter, against all odds, finds his photographer in the Himalayas and the photographer manages to get the long sought snow leopard into the focus of his camera. There is a small exchange of words:
Walter Mitty: When are you going to take it?
Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.
Walter Mitty: Stay in it?
Sean O'Connell: Yeah. Right there. Right here.
And THIS is my point connecting this review with my prevoius post, my nook in which I currently reside enjoying a moment in my life.
Movie continues a bit, shortly after that revealing the quintessence...
... which happens to be a keyhole view into Walter's life,
noteworthy life, life of meaning and substance and passion, just what that life always has been.
Beauty of that moment of Walter's life finally being a flow-through space, and not an inflamed apendix that ultimately dissolves him is a beauty of a fulfilled life; not only priceless but beyond cost.
