"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"

“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer,to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”

Last night we saw "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (Ben Stiller, 2013) and I left the movie feeling excited and motivated to go for an adventure; that even if you have not had big adventures in your life, it is not too late to have them. If I were to choose a word for this year, it might be "adventure." My life is certainly more adventurous than my mother's adventure and my children are certainly staged to have more adventures than I have currently had. Their adventures will be largely of the traveling kind. Ethan is hoping to be on the crew of a tall ship and on crew in Antarctica. Ellie will be traveling to Africa in the spring. My adventures are more about attitude and flexibility; welcoming change in my life and finding the opportunity that can be found in those new situations. I suspect that my kids think that I mostly am observing life, instead of being in it, but I say that I am glad that we created the kind of life that we have so that our kids can feel ready to embrace adventure. There will be time for my own adventures soon.

Trailer:


It is a fun story. Ben's version is really just a nod to the short story of the same name, but it was great. The scenery is beautiful and the designs are amazing. I always appreciate movies that have a clearly orchestrated design concept. In this movie,as in "Stranger Than Fiction," the use of graphics and text was exciting to me. You see some of the opening information on the sides of buildings, a parking garage, even on the road. A few important quotes were integrated into the runway as seen from above, continuing on the side of the plane. In another segment the text is on the side of the mountain. (I tried to find some examples of this online, but was not successful.) The cinematography was also stunning. The photographers stepped out of the usual ways to shoot and took some chances - very successful ones.

I will watch it again when it comes out on DVD. I want to soak in the artsy parts of the film again.

I am also impressed with what they did with some of the promotional budget. They had planned on financing the travel dreams of some people, but here's what they did instead:



How Casey Neistat put the $25,000 promotional budget for walter Mitty to good use: