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My Mitty Moment

We watched 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' over the long Memorial Holiday weekend in the US.  Then we bookended the weekend with an old spy film called 'The Good Shepherd' directed by Robert De Niro.

This weekend we remember the soldiers that lost lives over the many wars America fought.   Rightly it is about honoring the unquestionable courage and sacrifice that men and women provided in serving their country.  Another blog might perhaps cover the nuances of whether all wars were worth fighting, but as Dr. Fredericks in 'The Good Shepherd' tells Wilson (Matt Damon), "we are all bootmakers to the kings".

Another quote from De Niro's character says, "After all is said and done we are all clerks too".  All these embedded lines in movies sometimes highlight the real world a lot of us live in where we do not get a chance to explore the unknown or speak freely of our ideas, however democratic our institutions might appear to be - marriage, jobs, armies, relationships.

Out of all this duality of everyday life one seeks to find an outlet and in the case of Walter Mitty he is found dreaming of amazing adventures where he escapes his humdrum routine.  This character played by Ben Stiller is a back office clerk at Life magazine who finds himself day dreaming in the middle of conversations with colleagues and wishing he was a superhero.

In the climax of this movie he ends up traveling completely out of his comfort zone and ends up chasing a real world photographer and satisfy his lust for awesomeness.  Through some amazing CGI the audience is exposed to the eruption of a large Finnish Volcano and some real life camera work shows vistas of Iceland.

In a way Walter's fantasy does come true leaving me hoping that I too will find my Mitty moment one day.
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