The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty: “I just didn’t want to seem uncool.”
Ben Stiller is not widely known for his subtlety (with the odd notable exception such as the genius of Zoolander’s ‘blue steel’), and for the first twenty minutes or so of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – directed by and starring Stiller – everything just seemed altogether too…..well, Ben Stiller. But the film does settle into itself, as its themes of self-discovery and ordinary heroism gradually develop to bring surprisingly touching meaning to grandiose events. It is also of course a love story, with the original catalyst for Walter’s gradual turning of his fantasy world into a real one his desperation to simply be the sort of man who could ask out a woman (Kristen Wiig’s Cheryl, in this case), without mental-absence inducing fear.
Throughout his journey, the focus changes. His experience widening and his self-awareness deepening, Walter’s own identity becomes more and more quietly secure until finally he finds the sort of peace that means he no longer even feels the need to look at the missing negative for which he has been so determinedly searching – knowing his own memories and life to at last be enough. But despite all this – despite the adventures and the courage and what becomes in the end a vast range of experience and achievement – it is ultimately still only Cheryl that Walter wants in his life.
This leads to one of the simplest yet most perfect final scenes in recent romantic film history. Cheryl and Walter – question marks hanging over both their lives now that their employer company has closed down – walk slowly side by side along a sunny street, having an ordinary conversation about ordinary things. When they pass a newsstand, and finally get to see the cover of the farewell edition of Life magazine, Cheryl asks Walter if they shouldn’t maybe buy one of those. Walter replies that he’ll go back later, not wanting “to seem uncool.”
His words seem agonizingly out of place to the audience, given all that we know Walter has now been through and done. But it is shortly after he says them that it is made clear why such an apparently insignificant thing as not buying the magazine means so much to him. As they slowly continue walking, away from the newsstand, Walter takes Cheryl’s hand; there is no drama – there are no more words, there is barely a glance between them, and he doesn’t kiss her – Walter Mitty is still the man he has always been. There is just one exception: He has found a way to step out when it is really needed. In among all the volcanoes, storms, sharks, drunk pilots, mountain climbing and skateboards, this – taking the hand of the woman he loves – is the bravest thing he has ever done.