WALTER MITTY: THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE FOR WALTER MITTY: TO SEE THE WORLD

Millions of people across the globe lick their lips with the sweet excitement of the image of themselves, if not particularly as the path-breakers of the uncharted lands, at least as the enthusiasts, inspired by a vivid experience of those who serve as an embodiment of travel. The places on Earth, appreciated as no more than a ‘commonplaceness’, at the same time stimulate emotional vibrations on the opposite side of the world. The cinematography has been titillating the fantasies of the audience with the heart-pounding images of journeys for decades, yet generally leaving the delicacies and combat with their own habits beyond the frame, as well as mastering their own fear in a pursuit to win a few feet, expanding the comfort zone. The cosmic-kind law of equilibrium performs its uninterrupted functioning in a way that you need to apply enormous efforts to obtain something beyond ordinariness, to meet with a life-changing experience. The story of the fictional Walter Mitty and the purpose of life comes to be a kind of litmus paper, far more a self-challenge than a call to the outer world.

One of the indicative and unobvious delicate gradations of Walter’s story is open from the first moments of the narration. Walter Mitty draws breath in New York, a city generally appreciated as the desired destination and one’s journey for hundreds of millions of people from almost every populated corner of the Earth. With a hand on heart, would it be accurate to characterize Walter Mitty as the lucky one, a fortunate soul, who makes the most of this incredible city, which gives access to new arrangements and options? To the great extent of contrast, the character of Ben Stiller is to be depicted with no more importance than a cog in the social machine, a grey spot on the map of New York. Indeed, his ‘to see the world’ is limited to an undistinguished apartment with an exit to a featureless condominium hallway. The movie places a definite emphasis on Walter’s mid-sociality, his voluntary custody in the middle of New York. He has been doing the same job for the last sixteen years, though he is indeed a professional in his sphere. His social network ends with an elderly mother and an eccentric sister. Once living with a bunch of possibilities and alternatives, Walter makes his everyday breathing within a cocoon of woodenness, with a dilemma of ‘winking’ or not as the strongest emotional event.

With the scene with a camera-shaped fountain, the movie draws a parallel between Walter’s life and a frame of raw film, a metaphoric means that could be filled most inexplicably. As Sean O’Connell would later admit, sometimes he prefers not to take a photo, but rather just to satisfy the process. The exploration of the world takes on its form, and Walter, a deep-rooted New Yorker, would choose solitude next to nature as a means to tune his soul. He has had enough time alone with his thoughts (in fact, too much) for the last twenty years, yet he has not taken advantage of this fact. For the last sixteen years, Walter has been operating with the photos of people, including Sean, who are well-known for their ‘amazing lives’, tough Mitty has never tried to live in so much as was depicted on those million negatives. Taking closer account of the scene with a run along with the LIFE human-scale covers, we could suggest that Walter Mitty is indeed making his first steps in the direction of living his unique fate as a path-breaker.

The destination impact of the journey is more important than the actual places he visited. All the incredible image-breaking landscapes of Greenland, Iceland, and the Himalayas play the role of no more than a panel picture, every viewer can color as they please in making correlations with the touches of nature of Walter Mitty. More than that, the movie makes no conditions that life changes can only be achieved through expensive and challenging journeys abroad. More likely, Walter has never been to the district where Cheryl lives, as well as to the park where they would get in touch with her son. He has not experienced a coffee and a god-like cake with a friend in the lobby of the LA airport. The very world worth exploring is not restricted to the village in Greenland or the footsteps of an Icelandic volcano. The incredible story of Walter Mitty, once set to your pattern of life, would develop in a way you would like, and this unique movie experience makes the ‘Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ no less than one of the best life-inspiring and heart-warming movies of recent years.

Walter Mitty dusts off his never-yet-used travel bag as well, and he now takes advantage of his journal of a trip, once granted by his father, still disappointingly blank. The past with the loss of a father is now being self-reshaped to the frame of life, so that Walter’s parent could be proud of him. In a lapse of his travel to Afghanistan, Walter Mitty journalizes his difficulties and feelings in a way that the explorers of the past did. Mitty has been a LIFE magazine employee for sixteen years, and now a lot of doors are open for him. The scene of filling the resume with a spark of enthusiasm in the eyes symbolizes that the new worldview is indeed the most valuable asset, which has been gained recently, far more purposeful than photos or lines in a journal.

THINGS DANGEROUS TO COME TO 

Walter Mitty fills his fantasies with battle scenes against a rude new-made boss, he visualizes storming into the flaming accommodation house and hiking the mountain peaks to please his loved one. This made-up reality can be characterized as a shift away from the decisiveness of doing something in a material universe, from life in a way, indeed important for him, speaking on traveling, professional hierarchy in LIFE magazine, or making conversation with Cheryl. As the story goes on, each of his fantasies is to be fulfilled in material reality, and one should pay additional attention to the scene when Walter finally makes a few steps to get acquainted with Cheryl. This critical moment symbolizes the initial steps on the way to face reality and not to shy away. The world-renowned pearls of wisdom proclaim that one should do things that are frightening for the person, and this pattern of behavior appears to be a ticket to the real world for Walter Mitty, a reality where his deeds directly affect his life and future, even the lives of his closest social environment. The deeds determine who we are.

The ‘Space Oddity’ song, as Cheryl would later sensitize, reveals deep symbolic meaning. Once looking closer at the text of the composition, we can trace the very text line, which can capture the story of Walter Mitty, as well as millions of viewers, who see themselves within this cinematic metaphor. IT’S TIME TO LEAVE YOUR CAPSULE IF YOU DARE. The ‘capsule’ of the hymned spaceship plays the role of a strong metaphor for the self-accusations and the comfort zone, Walter has hidden earlier, not to face the calls and abilities of reality. The next defining moment of the story and Walter’s makeover is to be found and appreciated within the very steps on the way to the helicopter. For this purpose, the run-over-time considerations as well as studying the pros and cons are far from the means needed to make history. Walter Mitty was to take a leap of faith, a step into the unknown, supposedly frightening and sometimes dangerous. In this respect, the sequence with Afghanistan reflects the fact that even the idea of such a trip can scare most people, US citizens in particular, out of their senses as no more than something purposelessly insecure.

On closer scrutiny of the details of the movie, even Walter’s financial notes can be appreciated not without interest as soon as we speak of the trajectory of the character. For years, he has been doing nothing to change his own life and eliminate his debts. At present, Walter supposedly makes an inconsiderate act by spending 2872 dollars and 40 cents on tickets to Greenland. The truth is that now Walter believes in what he is doing and in what he thinks is right and worth making an effort. That sounds unreasonable and freaky until we catch the fact that the upcoming updated outlook for life is indeed worth every effort and dollar invested. Ten to one, the outlasted experience and the breaking of the view of life would let Walter Mitty find a highly-paid job and obviate financial debts once and for all as a new way of living. Walter’s traveling portfolio and his new life full of ventures and ecstasies, the dating platform, although Walter Mitty now finds less interest in living the made-up reality of life, depicted for other people. While breaking oneself and the calls of the world, Walter has started to live indeed and not in name.

TO SEE BEHIND WALLS 

Walter’s fantasies, among others, include one definite reference to his very element of the LIFE catchphrase. Within the very first made-up scene at the metro station, the protagonist acts as if he can see behind the walls, and later on, he breaks through the office wall to attract the attention of the woman he cares about. In actual practice, Walter Mitty lives in voluntary detention within the walls of grey-like housing space, the walls of the LIFE archive. He does a little practice of leaving these walls. The point is not at the lack of direct eye contact with exciting places and communicative people, as much as in the way of thinking, the clue hidden in the line of the famous motto. ‘To see behind the walls’ can be appreciated as ‘to read between the lines’ in the very sense of taking the reality, its options and openings, people, and the surrounding world. Walter draws a painful picture of Cheryl in the arms of her ex-husband, and the reality appears to be a child’s play, favorable to those who think positively. In the example given by the movie, ‘to see behind the walls’ could be taken as a move away from the stereotypes and prejudices, which generally limit our perception of the fascinating world.

Another revealing moment can be noticed within a scene when Walter bottoms the sideline, covered with the volcano dust, and sees not only a glimpse of civilization in the middle of Iceland nowhere but particularly PAPA JOHNS cafe, which brings the painful thoughts to the surface. For the last 16 years, Walter has seen the LIFE motto hundreds of times, but he has never believed in the world and never lived the way it was written, finding his purpose in life. The motivational impulse made by Sean is being transformed into a reconsideration of the words, open for interpretation to anyone. In truth, Walter Mitty is now to become the impersonator of the values and calls for actions (the motto was created in the form of watchwords), which were ingrained in the inner part of his wallet.

TO DRAW CLOSER 

The element of the LIFE motto can be characterized as the one with the deepest inclusion of possible renderings, each of the given can be, one way or another, projected on Water Mitty and his story. If we take ‘moving forward’, ‘finishing up’, and ‘approaching’ interpretations close to heart, the grey everyday routine is now succeeded by unprecedented purposiveness, with Sean’s 25th frame as a trigger point. It felt like Water tails along Sean, drawing closer each time within arm’s reach. The only pub in Greenland for Sean to take a photo of the finger and to have a giant boot-like glass of beer, a tangerine cake, a maiden voyage to Iceland, and finally, the visual contact moments before the eruption of Eyjafjallajökul. While overhauling his friend, Walter himself shares the way of an adventurous life, which can poignant millions of people, including Cheryl. It was Sean who had been impersonating Cheryl’s vision of the ideal man until Walter Mitty now lives through the events and travels, which instill in him the same virtues, and once having a living example, he can be drawn closer. At one point, the only possible solution to draw closer to Sean is to take a skateboard on a venturesome ride along Iceland, which transforms Mitty, does the groundwork of relations with Cheryl and her son, and makes Walter think big.

The second interpretation of the ‘to draw closer’, namely to come to a climax, to have an eye for detail, and to take a good look at, all these variations, repel the life changes of Walter Mitty. He accustoms himself to seeking personally ‘important’ things in detail, to strain his eyes on the beauty of the world, even with the finger of a helicopter pilot and a piano of his mother, the last one has been seen hundreds of times before. For the first time in the lapse of the past 16 years of work with photo negatives, Walter initiates no less than an investigation of a tiny inscription to reveal the name of the boat. In a wider sense, the protagonist gets a head start on adopting his priceless professional experience to the real world while taking material action in the universe. He now leads himself to the image that fits the ‘male wish list’ of Cheryl: ADVENTUROUS, BRAVE, CREATIVE. Once taking a look at a stone that has been lying on the terrain of Iceland for millions of years, Walter Mitty employs creativity and takes it as a means to cover a distance by a skateboard relatively harmlessly. Mitty pays his admiration to the birds to the very extent of their involvement in the process of falling off the bike. He has been holding the wallet, Sean’s gift, for some time without a precise look inside (apart from the motto). He would succeed in finding the lost negative not so much to Sean’s hint as to his widening of the worldview.

The third-in-a-row critical interpretation of the ‘to draw closer’ phrase for Walter Mitty deals with coming closer together with one’s family and people in his life. The logic goes that Walter has been close to his mother and sister for all these years, yet the upcoming journeys and adventures, the appreciated experience, would make them closer in a way that the mother’s move is no longer a misfortune, sand hould be treated beyond self-made fantasies. The offtake of the piano, as well as family hugging, would later become the apogee of this coming closer. Walter makes friends with a call center operator, thus ignoring the social barrier for such interactions. After years of dealing with Sean’s negatives, Walter makes his first steps toward sharing the way of life of his distant friend. Two mates make the most of playing football in the middle of the Himalayas. The surfing of Cheryl’s profile within a dating platform is to be transformed into the real-world relations of two mature and mutually involved persons. For the first time in years, Walter Mitty puts a shoulder under his junior college in an archive. The previously missing ‘25th frame’ of Mitty’s life is now to be found and printed.

TO FIND EACH OTHER AND TO FEEL

Except for the fantasy on the invitation to a TV show, Walter’s evasions from reality have not included the image of a person, surrounded by an intensely social environment and new people. His social network, as well as the whole frame of life, has been self-driven into the concrete jungles of New York, one of the most populated and multinational cities on the planet. Once made the first step in his travels, Walter got acquainted with interesting people, who expressed a readiness to give assistance and to keep company. Mitty finds simplicity in small talk with an operator of a call center. He strikes up an informal acquaintance with the only passenger on the NY-Greenland flight and later accompanies the lonely pilot to a bar in the remote village. Walter passes into a ship’s crew of the fishery vessel in the Atlantic and accepts invitations to make friends on Facebook. The Icelandic kids emphasize barter, and the local man saves Walter Mitty from the eruption of the volcano, wishing him the best. Finally, the sherpas are willing to assist Walter in his journey to find Sean. 

For years, Walter Mitty has been suppressing the frustration with his own life, anxiety about his perished father, and worries about his mother’s move. He created a kind of reality with no need to feel such kind of painful emotions. Despite his remote interest in Cheryl, such attention to a digital profile could hardly be perceived as real-world feelings. Walter even uses the metaphor of Benjamin Button to carry his dreams about relations with Cheryl to an absurdity. The world is that it’s incredibly pleasant to walk and hold hands, and you do not need to suffer from an incurable disease. After a scene with Cheryl’s ex-husband, Walter makes his last fantasy to avoid reality, yet he would not need it anymore as he has already mentored himself to live through reality. Cheryl could be called the ‘choosy lady’ not due to her self-indulgence, but due to the fact that Cheryl had no chance to feel something with the ‘winks’, and she reciprocated Walter’s attention in the real world. Mitty has been running from the painful thoughts of his father, whose death had changed Walter’s life, until the day when PAPA JOHNS Cafe assisted in taking the feeling and overcoming it. Finally, it is the family who shows Walter Mitty that close ones and emotions are of greater value than the old piano, and they would meet any hard time side by side and live through it.

In summary, every element of the LIFE motto assembles Walter Mitty, who finally makes sense of his life and changes it as well as the lives of his close ones. In a wider sense, this comedy with Ben Stiller is good at motivating and mobilizing its viewers to take an active involvement in their lives.