Have you ever imagined making fun of an irritating boss? Or have you ever imagined captivating the heart of your crush? Walter spends most of his day imagining things like this. Walter, who has worked for Life Magazine for 16 years, has never been to any special place or done anything special, ever. But ahead of the closing of Life Magazine, Walter couldn’t find the negative number 25, which was to be the cover of the final issue. Walter, who has hesitated to even send a wink on the dating website is tasked to board an Icelandic fishing trawler and climb up the Himalayas alone to meet Sean, a photographer of the picture. Will Walter be able to find the 25th photo? What is the 25th photo that Walter risks his life to find?
Characters
Walter Mitty: A negative asset manager of Life Magazine. He often daydreams of adventures in his daily life. He joins a dating website to meet Cheryl, a woman he has a crush on at work, but can't fill out his profile because he doesn’t have any special experiences in his life. He travels to Greenland to find Sean O'Connell and the missing negative.
Cheryl Melhof: A member of the finance team at Life Magazine, and Walter’s crush. A fan of mystery novels, she advises Walter to find clues in the pictures. They get close during this, and Cheryl helps Walter little by little. When Walter is teased as “Major Tom”, she tells him that it's actually a very brave song. And this gives Walter the power to move forward.
Sean O'Connell: A freelance photographer. A true artist who doesn’t fear the volcanoes. Although Sean and Walter have been working with each other for 14 years, they have never actually met. He sends Walter a wallet and the negative that is to be used as the cover of the last issue of Life Magazine.
Synopsis
Ahead of the closing of Life Magazine, Sean O'Connell's 25th negative, which should be the cover of the final issue, disappears. The atmosphere of the company is troubled due to restructuring. The negative asset manager of Life Magazine Walter decides to go see Sean in person to find the missing photo. Since Sean travels all around the world, finding him isn't easy. Walter searches for clues to find him using three clear photos that Sean has sent him. In the first photo, the name of the ship reflected in the sea turns out to be Greenlandic, and Walter immediately leaves for Greenland. At the bar he arrives in Greenland, he finds the owner of the thumb from the second picture and flies with him in a helicopter to the ship ‘Erkigsnek’. Walter jumps into the cold sea from a helicopter and fights a herd of sharks with only a single suit case. Walter gets on board the Erkigsnek and disembarks in Iceland after finding Sean's filming schedule written on a package while eating a cake given to him by the crew. In Iceland, Walter rides 17 kilometers on a bike and longboard, and rides a car to run from volcanic eruptions. After just missing Sean, Walter returns home for a call from a coworker who is in danger of being fired. And he solves the mystery of the last picture, he gets fired but gives another shot to find Sean and a photo, leaving to the Himalayas.
Making of a Brave Man
Walter spends lots of time daydreaming. Even when talking with someone, he falls deeply into his imagination. But Walter’s imagination is not ordinary. In Walter’s imaginations, he jumps through the window into a building just before a gas explosion and saves Cheryl's dog, and runs a chase riding a ski on an asphalt road with his rude boss to protect his toy, ‘Stretch Armstrong’. Although Walter has great creativity and imagination, he has never experienced anything even close to what he pictures for himself. But Walter leaves for Greenland without hesitation to find the missing photo. When he sits in a bar deciding not to get on a helicopter due to the rough weather and a drunken pilot, Cheryl appears in his imagination singing ‘Space Oddity’. This encourages Walter to go out of the bar, run toward the helicopter and jump into it the very moment before it takes off from the ground. This scene touches the heart of the audience. In the scene in which Walter leaves his office and runs through a hall lined with pictures of the Life Magazine covers, the last one is a picture of Walter with the title “Making of a Brave Man”, which is in his imagination. The very moment Walter jumps into a helicopter making his imagination into a reality is indeed the “Making of a Brave Man”.
Walter was not a coward, though he had no special experience in life. Walter just had no reason to get out of his repetitive daily routine. Walter turns his imagination into a reality through this film. How about your life? Most modern people spend their days walking around a set route in a busy life that turns like a hamster wheel. It is a natural routine for students to study and for workers to do their jobs. There are people who don't ever leave their areas of comfort even a single footstep, let alone new challenges. That doesn't mean they don't have dreams. Pursuing one’s imagination and ideals out of our safe reality is unstable and uncertain. That’s why it is scary to step out of a familiar routine. However, <The Secret Life of Walter Mitty> inspires courage to those who fear to escape from their daily lives. Life is about courage and going into the unknown. Are you dreaming of breaking away from a repetitive daily life? “Making of a Brave Man” can be you.
People with Faith in Their Work
The first to show faith in his work is Walter. Walter had a choice when he found out that there was no 25th negative. He could have given up looking for the missing negative and replaced it with another one in secret. Instead, Walter leaves to find the missing photo. Walter gets a wallet with the motto of Life Magazine as a gift from Sean. “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.” Walter has not been working for only money in Life Magazine for 16 years. Walter knew the motto of Life Magazine and had faith in it. He knew exactly what he was doing and did his best. Walter's mother conveys what Sean said to her. That Walter really understood Life Magazine, and that Walter was the person who worked the hardest to make sure Sean’s work was realized the way he wished. Walter asks Ted, the boss who came to do the restructuring, the motto of the company. He couldn’t answer. Walter says, "This thing that you do, Ted, where you come into a place and push people out. You should know that those people worked really hard to build this magazine. They believed in the motto.” This line lets people know of the existence of those who do their jobs with faith, who know the essence, not the shell, and who are passionate about it.
The second to show faith in his work is Sean. To take a picture, Sean stands up on a wing of a plane entering an erupting volcano and sits on a rock in the Himalayas waiting for a snow leopard that might never even show itself. Sean doesn’t take a picture when the snow leopard appears even though it is the moment Sean had been waiting for. When Walter asks him when he is going to take a picture, he replies, “If I like a moment, I mean, me, personally, I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it. Right here.” Sean didn’t take the picture in order to fully appreciate the moment, even losing the shot. He shows the attitude of a true artist, following his beliefs, not material or honor. When the snow leopard appears, Sean tells Walter, “Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.” At that moment, Sean was referring to the snow leopard. However, from the perspective of the audience, ‘beautiful’ reminds people of Walter. For 16 years, Walter has been working in a dark negative studio harder than anyone else but never asked for attention. Walter, who never gave up on finding the picture for the last issue of the magazine and didn’t ask anyone to recognize his work: wouldn’t he be the true ‘beautiful’ that Sean mentioned?
<The Secret Life of Walter Mitty> doesn’t only show the pleasant and fantastic imaginings of Walter. The movie inspires courage to those who live a repetitive daily life. Also, it shows people who have faith in their work and follow the motto. Walter eventually finds Sean's 25th negative. But he submits it to the company without even seeing it. When the final issue is published, Walter sees the cover with Cheryl. The 25th photo with the phrase “Dedicated to the People Who Made It” was ordinary but fully touching. If you're curious about the 25th photo called “The Quintessence of Life”, which Walter took on a dramatic adventure to get, please check it out in the movie.